The Raven
by Jedi Sapphire
Summary: The Raven is a hotel opposite a haunted house. Sam and Dean are there on a routine job. Then Sam finds a package of letters under a floorboard, and a mysterious ghost with sad eyes insists Dean is going to kill his brother. Written for the 2013 Big Bang round. Spoilers through to 8.10, "Torn and Frayed".
1. Prologue

**Disclaimer: **I don't own _Supernatural_, or Sam and Dean, or _The Raven_.

**Summary: **_The Raven _is a hotel opposite a haunted house a few miles outside Baltimore. Sam and Dean are there on a boringly routine job. Then Sam finds a package of letters under a floorboard, a mysterious ghost with sad eyes insists Dean is going to kill his brother, and the world's creepiest doctor shows up claiming he can cure Sam, who's suddenly starting to spike high fevers for no reason Dean can figure out.

**Rating: **PG13

**Spoilers: **Through to 8.10, _Torn and Frayed_.

**Warnings: **Minor language, horror elements and violence.

**Author's Notes: **This is my entry for this year's Big Bang! Art is by the wonderful eyestoowide; if you want to see it (or if you want to read the whole story at once without waiting for the chapter updates here), it's on my fic journal.

Thanks go to Cheryl, who patiently read everything and pointed out loose ends I would've missed, SandyDee84 for listening to all my rambling about plot, and Scribble2Much for keeping me at it the last couple of weeks!

* * *

**The Raven**

**Prologue: Lady of Mercy Hospital, Baltimore**

_Detective Fuller hurried to the nurses' station. "I'm here to –"_

"_See Dr. Jenkins?" Nurse Andrews asked, her smile wide and full of meaning. "She told us you'd be coming. Go through to her office."_

_Detective Fuller smiled back, but his heart wasn't in it. Dr. Jenkins – otherwise known as his longtime girlfriend Dora – had sounded anxious over the phone. As an ER surgeon she'd seen some unpleasant things, and she didn't call him unless it was serious._

_His instinct was to burst into her office unannounced, but he forced himself to knock. Sometimes she had patients' families in there with her and he didn't think they'd appreciate having their heart-to-heart interrupted by Fuller kicking the door down. _

_The door opened a crack and Dora's eye peeked out. When she saw it was him, she opened the door the rest of the way, relief clear on her face._

"_Jim. Come in."_

_Fuller slipped into the room and shut the door. It was when he turned around that he saw the stranger._

_The stranger was a man. Mid thirties. He was tall – a couple of inches over Fuller's five-eleven. And there was something about him… Fuller couldn't judge build or musculature under the fourteen layers of shirts he was wearing, but he didn't need to judge build or musculature to know the stranger was trouble._

_The stranger's resentful green eyes raked Dora, and Fuller resisted the urge to thrust himself in front of her._

"_Hello," he said instead, carefully. "I don't believe we've met."_

"_Mr. Smith, this is Detective Fuller. He's with the Baltimore police. Jim, this is Dean Smith. His younger brother was brought in earlier with severe trauma."_

"_Oh." Fuller relaxed, just a little. Worry about a family member might explain Dean Smith's belligerent attitude. "I'm sorry to hear that, Mr. Smith. Is he…"_

_He turned to Dora._

_She didn't smile. "Sam Smith came through surgery," she said briskly. "He's in the ICU. Rob says he's doing as well as can be expected."_

"_Then…" Fuller turned from Dora to Dean Smith. "What's wrong?"_

_Dora crossed her arms and glared at Dean. "I suspect abuse."_

* * *

What did you think? Good? Bad? Please review!

I know it's a short prologue, but there's more coming. :-)


	2. While I Nodded, Nearly Napping

**Disclaimer: **Still not mine.

Thanks to Sapphire Wing, doyleshuny, ILB, judyann, Olive-Pizza, twomoms, SayLo, criminally charmed, isabelcolin, Ange De La Misericorde, reannablue, hotshow, shookenuppepsi, emebalia, scootersmom, L.A.H.H and TG for the reviews and to Cheryl for the beta.

* * *

**Chapter I: While I Nodded, Nearly Napping**

"Just one more, you big baby," Dean muttered, holding Sam still with a hand on his shoulder. "Tell me how old you are again?" Sam didn't reply. Dean sighed and put down the needle, sliding his hand into his brother's hair. "Hey. You OK?"

"Get on with it," Sam muttered.

Dean rolled his eyes. "Excuse me for trying not to hurt you. Next time I'll just let you bleed out all over the floor and leave the mess for the cleaners."

"Shut up," Sam said, words slurring with exhaustion.

Dean smiled, keeping his hand in Sam's hair, rubbing his head lightly until Sam's eyes closed and his breathing evened out. Then he picked up the needle again.

He'd just put in the last stitch, Sam barely stirring the whole time – and yeah, Dean would like to see anyone _else_ do that, stitch up a torn shoulder while the patient slept through it _without _the aid of drugs, Dean was just _awesome _at first aid – when Sam's phone rang.

Dean cursed – _stupid phone, waking Sam after all that trouble_ – and answered it, mainly to shut it up. It was too late by then, Sam was awake and blinking drowsily at him, but maybe Dean could get him back to sleep.

He shoved the first aid kit unceremoniously aside and dropped to the edge of the bed, letting his hand rest on the nape of Sam's neck as he whispered, "Hello?" into the phone.

"Dean? Why are you answering Sam's phone?"

"Garth?" Dean asked. He kept his voice low and even, hoping it would lull Sam back to sleep. Dean was probably a horrible brother for feeling secretly relieved when Sam was injured badly enough that sheer exhaustion and pain would make him sleep a night through, but when you had to deal with the world's leading insomniac you took your breaks where you could get them. "What do you want?"

"Dude, why are you talking like that? Is Sam OK?"

"I'm not talking like anything," Dean said in his normal voice. Sam's eyes had drifted shut again, so it was OK. As long as Dean was just talking and not shouting a warning or screaming in pain, Sam wouldn't wake up. "What's up?"

"I heard you and Sam were in New Jersey."

"Yeah, we are." Dean moved, sitting back against the headboard, grateful for the chance to rest his back. "Why? Something we should know about?"

"Yes… Well, nothing too bad. I just have a friend in Baltimore who needs some help – our kind of help – and I've got my hands full with – well, you know." Dean nodded; he did know. Garth was keeping tabs on Kevin Tran, their prophet. "So, since you and Sam are in the area, I was wondering if you could swing by?"

"What's the job?"

"I have a friend called Lou West – my father's friend, actually. He's opening a haunted house."

"A _real _haunted house?"

Garth laughed. "No, idjit." Dean just managed not to cringe. "You think I wouldn't have stopped him? No, it's one of those fairground, amusement park kind of things. On a bigger scale. Lou has vision."

"So where do we come in? He wants Sam to dress up as Sasquatch for his opening night?"

Garth laughed again. "No. It's simple, Dean. Lou had one of those Wiccans come and draw occult stuff on the walls and floors. For atmosphere, he said. He wants a hunter to take a look at it and make sure he won't actually wind up summoning a demon."

Dean sighed. "Let me get this straight. Your friend had some New Age yoga chick draw crap on his walls and now he wants us to establish that she hasn't accidentally drawn something that means something to, potentially, _any _of the world's religions, including religions that people stopped following in the Stone Age?"

"Well, when you put it like that… I guess it's kind of difficult."

"You kidding me? You're lucky we're in New Jersey." Dean's free hand dropped to his brother's head again. "Sammy's the only person alive who, _maybe_, has a shot at doing this."

"So you'll go?"

"I'll have to check with Sam, but we don't have anything else lined up, so I don't see why not."

"Great." Dean could almost _hear_ Garth's grin. "Thanks, Dean. I knew I could count on you guys."

* * *

"_What _now?" Sam asked, looking so horrified you'd think someone had asked him to kidnap puppies.

"Check the guy's decor and make sure there's nothing disastrous," Dean repeated patiently.

"But, Dean… What if it's in Mandarin? Neither of us speaks Mandarin. Or the proto-Indo-European language, there's nobody left in the world who speaks that."

"Yeah, Sam," Dean said, just managing not to comment on how Sam seemed about fifty times more eager to get some freaking _runes _right for some idiot friend of Garth's that they'd never even met before than he _ever _had been to look for Dean in Purgatory. "He just had some hippie chick do this, but yeah, I'm _sure _Patchouli managed to find something in a language you don't know."

Sam glared. "Well, if there _does _turn out to be a spell that summons Anansi and we don't find it, I'm blaming you."

"Sure. What the hell is a Nancy anyway?"

"_Anansi_," Sam enunciated.

"Whatever you say, princess. Look, Sam, just calm down. It's a hippie chick. I'm sure she doesn't know Enochian or anything –"

"Enochian would be OK," Sam muttered. "I can read Enochian."

Dean stared. "How the hell can you read Enochian?"

Sam flushed. "Michael and Lucifer. They… Well. When they want you to learn something, they make sure you learn it."

Dean felt a little sick. In all his PTSD from Purgatory (or non-PTSD, because Dean Winchester did _not _get traumatized by a little blood) it was easy to forget that Sam had been through a hundred and eighty years of the Cage.

"Sammy…"

Sam shook his head. "It's not a big deal. Just – I can read Enochian. So we're safe there. You know, if there's some summoning ritual in Enochian that snuck in. I can't answer for Mandarin."

"Awesome." Dean forced his lips into something resembling a grin. "What are we waiting for, then? Let's hit the road."

* * *

They didn't actually hit the road that day.

Sam was still hurting – he tried to hide it, but Dean could see right through him and his stupid attempt to claim that he was ready to sit through the drive to Baltimore. Sure it was only three hours (well, an hour and a half if you drove like Dean Winchester and not like somebody's elderly great-aunt) but that was still no reason to risk Sam's stitches.

They stayed at the motel. Dean made a run for pizza and beer and Sam found _Night of the Living Dead _on cable, and they spent the afternoon sitting on the ratty sofa listing all the ways in which George Romero absolutely would _not _survive a real zombie apocalypse. It was ridiculous and familiar, and for a moment Dean could pretend that there had never been Ruby or Lilith or Lucifer or Benny or anything else between them. For a moment it felt like it was still just him and Sam on the open road.

Without thinking, he leaned closer to Sam.

Sam looked startled, but he went with it, bumping Dean's shoulder with his and poking at Dean where he was the most ticklish, just to prove he still remembered how to be a pain-in-the-ass little brother. By the time they finished the resultant mock-wrestling match (_mock_-wrestling because there was just too much crap everywhere and Sam's shoulder was still a little fragile) the movie was over.

Dean made sure Sam hadn't busted any stitches, because that would be just like the kid, to ruin all Dean's handiwork and put them both through that torture again.

When Dean was sure Sam hadn't done any damage, he left to get more beer from the convenience store down the street.

He came back to find Sam on his bed, leaning back on a pile of pillows looking emo.

"What?" Dean asked warily.

"Lou West called."

"Garth's buddy?"

"Yeah."

Dean wondered what the hell Lou West had done to put that look on Sam's face. The thought was followed by a desire, strong and almost shocking in its intensity, to introduce Lou to Dean's fist.

Huh.

It shouldn't surprise him that he felt so fiercely protective of Sam. But it did. Sam had grown up so much; now he was about three times Dean's size and more than capable of taking care of himself. More than capable of dealing with anything the world could throw at him.

And then Sam got that _look_ on his face, like he'd had a first-edition copy of _War and Peace _and a puppy and someone had taken both of them away. It wasn't fair that that look _still _made Dean want to break things.

"What happened?" he asked, and if his voice was a low growl, well, that was just the natural consequence of knowing somebody had upset Sammy. "What did he say to you?"

As he waited for Sam to respond, he wondered just how fond Garth was of his friend, and how much he'd care if Lou had an _accident_. Like, maybe, accidentally running into a brick wall. About twelve times.

He was so busy fantasizing about beating Lou West to a pulp (kind of difficult when he had no idea what the guy looked like, but he'd have Sam pull up a photo) that it took him a moment to realize that Sam was showing no sign of responding.

Dean scowled, considered and decided against badgering Sam into telling him what had gone down, and grabbed his brother's phone instead. He found the last call and called the number back.

"Hello?" an unfamiliar voice said. "Sam?"

"No, this is Dean." Dean sat on his bed, opposite Sam, and nudged his brother's knee. Sam smiled at him, shaking his head in silent warning. Dean ignored it. "So I hear you spoke to Sam. Anything I need to know about?"

Some hint of the mental pictures he was still amusing himself with must have seeped into his voice, because Lou said, a little too quickly, "Nothing. Really. Nothing at all. I'm grateful to you boys for helping me out like this."

"Really? You sure that's all?"

Dean might not have big, soulful eyes that could make people pour out their deepest secrets, but he was John Winchester's son and he could sure as hell do intimidation. Lou West only lasted a few seconds.

"Look," he told Dean, sighing, "I don't want trouble or anything. I just… I know some hunters, OK? And I heard some… stuff… about Sam. And some Satanic business. I know what you do, but I just wanted to make sure it wasn't anything I needed to worry about. That's all. No offence."

Dean thought he must have heard wrong. He _must _have heard wrong, that was the only explanation, because if he heard _right_, it meant that this man – this man who was stupid enough to open a freaking haunted house and who was being given the indescribable privilege of having the closest thing the hunting community had to a walking encyclopaedia come and make sure that he hadn't woken anything hairy that would eat him – upset Sam because he was curious about the _Lucifer thing_.

Dean drew in a long, steadying breath.

Then he said, "Listen, douchebag. You mention that ever again – in fact, you do anything to upset Sam ever again – and I'm going to show up overnight and fill your little-girl haunted house with summoning spells for every supernatural thing I know. Do not mess with my brother. We clear?"

Lou stuttered out a response, which Dean mostly ignored, and asked if they were still coming to help.

Dean raised an eyebrow in Sam's direction. Sam wasn't even looking at him, but he must have sensed the question, because he nodded.

"Yeah," Dean said into the phone. "Sam's too damn forgiving for his own good, or mine, so we're coming. We'll see you tomorrow."

"Great," Lou said. "I've arranged for you to stay at my hotel… It's new, I'm going to open it to the public when I open the haunted house next month but it's fully stocked and there's a skeleton staff in place so they can take care of you. I'm staying there myself, right now. It's very close to the haunted house, easier to do it this way than to make the drive from Baltimore everyday."

"What, this place isn't in Baltimore?"

"It's a few miles outside of town. I'll send you directions."

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	3. Interlude 1

**Disclaimer: **Not mine.

Thanks to doyleshuny, shookenuppepsi, alena, Olive-Pizza, hotshow, emebalia, Midua22, lexi'ssorryforthis, L.A.H.H, BranchSuper, twomoms, Visionairy, firstcatfish, SPN Mum, Ange De La Misericorde, DreamInInk, Lyzzybelle, SayLo and Tina for the reviews, and to Cheryl for the beta.

* * *

**Interlude: Lady of Mercy Hospital, Baltimore**

_Fuller snapped back to complete attention. He'd thought Dean Smith was just a random jerk, but this was different. This was serious. If he'd been left in charge of his little brother and had betrayed his position and his brother's trust…_

_If there was one thing Fuller hated, it was an abuser._

"_Don't you dare," Dean hissed at Dora, every word coming out like a threat. "I don't know what kind of stupid game you're playing, trying to keep me from Sam, but I've had enough of it."_

"_You admitted to having had an argument –"_

"_We're brothers! We fight! Doesn't mean I don't care about the kid!" Dean took a step forward. "Look, I get that you're doing your job, and I respect that, but this is my baby brother. He wakes up alone in ICU and I'm not there, he's going to freak. You have to let me sit with him."_

"_Mr. Smith, I cannot approve of that."_

"_The hell you can't. Listen, doctor, I'm going to see my brother whether you like it or not."_

_Fuller sensed that Dean Smith was about to explode and he didn't want to clean up the mess if he did. Far better to head trouble off at the pass. He wouldn't hesitate to lock the other man away for the rest of his life if he really was hurting his baby brother, but his outrage sounded genuine._

"_Let's all go up to the ICU," he suggested. Dean glared, and he added, "I'm sorry, Mr. Smith, but nobody's going to let you visit an unconscious patient if there's even a whisker of suspicion that you've been hurting him. I don't care if he is your brother. If you want to see him, I'm coming with you. Otherwise you're staying here and I'll make sure every single person working on that floor knows not to let you anywhere near your brother. Do we understand each other?"_

"_Perfectly," Dean said tightly._

* * *

I know it's short… I'll try to get the next chapter up sooner to make up.

What did you think? Good? Bad? Please review!


	4. And This Mystery Explore

**Disclaimer:** Not mine. Alas.

Thanks to Lyzzybelle, L.A.H.H, reannablue, criminally charmed, missingmikey, doyleshuny, emebalia, twomoms, BranchSuper, Visionairy, SPN Mum and Holliday for the reviews and to Cheryl for the beta.

* * *

**Chapter II: And This Mystery Explore**

Dean whistled as he braked outside _The Raven_. He supposed it was an appropriate name for a hotel opposite a haunted house a few miles outside Baltimore.

He glanced at Sam, smiled at the amusement in his brother's eyes, and said, "Go get us a room, bitch. And make sure it isn't a lame one."

Sam slid out of the passenger seat and went inside, ducking under the low-hanging signboard with a picture of a raven sitting on a skull. He was gone long enough that Dean started to worry. He was on the verge of getting out and going after his brother when Sam reappeared.

"What took so long?" Dean demanded.

"They're a little messed up. It isn't really open yet, though she said everything's good to go… Apparently we're practically the only people here. There's a couple of other rooms occupied but those are all the way across the hotel from ours. Some friends of Lou's, helping him get stuff set up."

"So we have a plan yet?"

"Lou left a message. He and his Wiccan friend are going to meet us in an hour to give us details of what they've done to the haunted house." Sam popped the trunk and pulled out both their bags. "Let's go."

Dean trailed inside after Sam, not bothering to help with the bags. What was the point of having a little brother the size of a house if you didn't get him to do the heavy lifting?

* * *

Dean spent the hour before they had to meet Lou catching up on some much-needed sleep. Sam spent it hunched over his laptop. Dean woke up fresh, brimful of awesome, and ready to deal with whatever Lou and his voodoo chick had accidentally unleashed in their haunted house. Sam stayed grumpy all the way downstairs to Conference Room B, where Lou was meeting them. (And, seriously, Conference Room B? That was just hilarious. It was like Lou thought he was running a high-end business hotel instead of a dive that was just too new and shiny to look like a dive yet.)

Of course as soon as Sam saw Lou and the girl, his bad mood vanished and he turned on the eyes. Sam called it professionalism. Dean called it being a little bitch.

"Do you like the hotel?" was the first question Lou asked, right after he'd poured them both coffee.

Dean didn't bother to respond. Sam would make the appropriate polite sounds, and he was still holding onto his grudge against Lou for upsetting his brother.

"Yes, it _is_ an old building," Lou said, in response to some geeky comment Sam made about the architecture. "Eighteenth century, according to local records. Most of the main building collapsed in a storm in the 1830s and since it was so far out of the way, nobody really bothered to fix it up. It's been going to seed ever since." He smiled, the wide smile of a businessman who had made a good deal and knew it. "I got it for practically nothing. Tried to stick to the original plans when I was fixing it up. We had to rebuild all the main building, but there's some of the original architecture in the basement and the wings if you want to take a look later."

"Yeah," Dean said, cutting in before Sam could say something that would prolong this pointless conversation. Freaking _architecture_. "It's pretty. Now how about the job?"

Sam glared at him. Dean ignored it. If Sam had his way, he'd want Dean to be nice to freaking _everyone_.

"Right," Lou said, enthusiasm undimmed. "The job. The haunted house property isn't far. It used to be… I'm not quite sure what, probably a groundskeeper's cottage or something. There's a small road leading to the back entrance to this place, and the haunted house is on the other side. You wouldn't have been able to see it from your room, although it does face that direction. Too many trees in the way. This is Maggie –"

"_Astra_," the girl said firmly. "My Wiccan name is _Astra_, Lou. I've told you to use it." She turned to Sam and Dean. "Lou says you know something about the arts?"

Dean choked on his coffee. Before he could put _Astra _straight, Sam said, "A little, yes. Can you tell us something about what you've done?"

Dean tuned out Astra's explanation. It was Sam's job to pay attention to the lunatics. Dean's job was just to start killing things when Sam pointed him in the right direction.

When the torture was over and Astra and Lou had gone, Dean asked, "Well? Any of it real?"

"Probably not." Sam leafed through the _pages _of notes he'd taken. Idiot. "She isn't really Wiccan, more a girl who has a lot of little brass curios and _wishes _she were Wiccan. But there is just a possibility that she might accidentally have stumbled onto something real. We'll check it out."

"Awesome. After lunch? I saw a diner on the way here."

"What, that greasy-looking place a mile down the street?"

"Yeah. I bet if I make you eat a burger there you'll turn into a real boy."

"Hilarious. Is there some place we can eat that'll turn you into a normal person?"

"_Hey!_" Dean elbowed Sam. "I'm perfectly normal."

"Your perfectly normal arteries are going to give up the fight any day now."

"If listening to your bitching didn't hurt my arteries, a hamburger isn't going to."

They had a relaxed lunch. Meeting the hippie chick seemed to have reassured Sam that this thing was no kind of real threat and Dean was willing to go with his brother's instincts. Sam spent half the meal making his headache face. It would have been effective if he'd actually had a headache, but Dean suspected he was just trying to express his disapproval of Dean's meal choices. Dean ignored it.

* * *

They walked from the hotel to the haunted house.

It was one of the most ridiculous things Dean had ever seen. It was clearly a new building. He might not be an expert on colonial architecture like Sam, but he'd been in enough old houses to know which ones were really eighteenth-century and which ones were twenty-first century pretending. The haunted house was so new you could still smell the cement.

The front door was festooned with fake cobwebs complete with large rubber spiders.

"So how long is this going to take?" Dean asked, wrinkling his nose.

"Not long," Sam said, pulling out his phone. "We don't actually need to stay here… We can just take pictures of everything and then look at them in detail back at the hotel. We'd still have to come back for a final sweep tomorrow, though."

"Great," Dean said, a lot more cheerful now that he knew the plan didn't involve him hanging out in this weird place longer than a few minutes. "You go get whatever pictures you need and I'll… Yeah. I'll just be here."

Sam raised an eyebrow. "You're not coming in?"

"This place gives me the creeps."

"Seriously? You've hunted _actual _monsters from people's nightmares, and rubber spiders give you the creeps?"

"They're _looking_ at me. What if they're possessed?"

"Idiot," Sam muttered, pushing past Dean into the house. "Fine, wait here."

"Holler if you need me to come hold your hand," Dean said. "You know, if there are any clowns in there or anything."

"Screw you."

Dean laughed. "Seriously, though, you need me to hang around? Because if all you're going to be doing is taking pictures, I just saw a hot waitress at that place we had lunch and I'm pretty sure she'd be willing to give me her number."

"Really, Dean?"

"Come on, Sammy," Dean said, grinning broadly and nudging Sam. "Lighten up. This isn't even a _real _job, this is just some crap for Garth's friend and a hippie chick. There's not even anything supernatural. It's a geekfest. I'll just be in your way."

Sam huffed, but it sounded more amused than exasperated. "Fine. You go have fun. I'll call you if I need anything."

"That's my boy!"

* * *

Sam watched Dean go, trying not to smile. When Dean turned, grinned broadly, and waved, he gave up, laughing and waving back. Sam supposed _one _of them should be having a good time, and it really didn't seem like a difficult job. Astra had maintained pretty thorough records and it all seemed like silly, harmless fun.

He rubbed his forehead. He could feel a headache starting, so it was just as well this was such a non-job. He'd just take his photographs and go back and get some sleep.

Sam let himself in with the key Lou had given him. The inside was like most haunted houses Sam had ever been to. Fake cobwebs hung from the support beams. There were large cupboards that would probably open to reveal mummies or zombies or headless corpses. The walls were covered in weird symbols in red paint.

Sam rolled his eyes and started snapping pictures.

He went through the first two rooms and then made his way upstairs. The steps were creaky and swaying, and Sam made a mental note to warn Lou that they might not stand the weight of hordes of eager teenagers running up and down them.

The upstairs was small. Sam made a quick circuit, photographing the pentagrams and other graffiti. By the time he'd finished, his headache was a lot worse, probably from the lack of fresh air.

Sam shook his head to clear it and stumbled down the stairs.

He _did _feel a little better as soon as he was downstairs. Probably some weird paint or something upstairs.

Sam finished up quickly and went back outside.

He'd been expecting fresh air to make him feel better, but it didn't, and suddenly the short walk from the haunted house to the hotel seemed daunting.

His hand found his cell phone, finger hovering over speed dial 1. After a moment, though, he put the phone back in his pocket. There wasn't anything really wrong with him, he was tired and he probably just hadn't gotten enough sleep. There was no need to spoil Dean's fun with the waitress from the diner.

The walk back took him about six times as long and he even managed to take a wrong turn (while crossing the _one _freaking road between the haunted house and the hotel; Dean would never let him hear the end of it if he found out) but eventually Sam was back in their room.

He didn't even bother loading the photographs to his laptop. He'd do it after his nap.

* * *

"I'll be back in a minute."

Dean nodded, eyes following Sharon's tempting curves as she walked away in the direction of the ladies' room. As soon as the door had shut behind her, though, he pulled out his cell to text Sam.

_Done yet, bitch?_

He expected a quick response. Sam had had more than enough time to finish taking pictures. It had been a _tiny _building.

There was nothing, though, and by the time Sharon came back Dean was getting a little uncomfortable.

He forced his mind back to their conversation, but not before sending another text to Sam.

Half an hour later, Sam hadn't replied to any of Dean's messages and Sharon was starting to lose patience with a guy who kept interrupting her funny stories to check his cell phone. It didn't take long for them both to decide to give up the night as a bad job.

Dean made sure to drive under the speed limit on his way back to the hotel, because he wasn't an overprotective idiot who was panicking because his little brother hadn't replied to his texts. (And a little because a storm had just started and if he skidded the Impala into a ditch he wouldn't be able to ream Sam out for ignoring his cell phone.) He also didn't press the elevator button about three hundred times and then sprint the five floors up to their room when two seconds had passed without the elevator showing up.

Dean did none of those things (and since nobody else was around, nobody could claim differently), but if he _had_ done them, he'd have felt fully justified when he burst into their room to find the lights out and Sam a motionless blanket-wrapped bundle on the far bed.

He padded quietly into the room, noticing Sam's phone on the table with the message light blinking.

Then he sat on the edge of Sam's bed and pulled back the blankets. The movement woke Sam, who blinked up at him blearily.

"Dean?"

"Sorry, kiddo. Didn't mean to wake you. You OK?"

"Yeah, just had a headache."

Dean's senses went on high alert instantly. Sam's headaches were _never _good news. What if this was a sign of hell recurring or something? Maybe whatever Cas had done hadn't been enough to push Lucifer away for good.

"Headache?" He kept his voice level, because there was no point worrying Sam until he knew for sure there was something to worry about. "How bad is it?" His hand skimmed Sam's forehead, and he flinched at the heat he felt there. "Running a fever, Sammy."

He felt a little relieved as he said the words. Fever was normal. They could deal with fever. Especially because Dean could tell this wasn't a particularly high fever. Not a hospital fever or even a doctor fever, just a don't-let-Dean-sleep-tonight fever.

"Sorry?" Sam tried, and Dean laughed.

"Yeah, you should be. I ran out on Sharon because you weren't answering your phone. I had horrible visions of you lying here in a pool of your own blood and it turns out you've barely even got a temperature. You owe me a hot girl."

"I don't manufacture hot girls, Dean," Sam muttered, and the snark had Dean smiling and mussing his hair. If Sam could be sarcastic, Sam wasn't that sick. "And you didn't have to leave your date."

"And listen to you bitching tomorrow?" Dean patted Sam's shoulder. "Take anything for it?" Sam shook his head. "OK, then. I'll get you Tylenol. Sleep it off."

* * *

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	5. Interlude 2

**Disclaimer:** Nothing's mine.

Thanks to criminally charmed, reannablue, DreamInInk, doyleshuny, Olive-Pizza, SayLo, emebalia, twomoms, L.A.H.H, BranchSuper, hotshow, SPN Mum, sammynanci and Nouri for review and to Cheryl for the beta.

* * *

**Interlude: Lady of Mercy Hospital, Baltimore**

_The ICU was quiet. The monitors attached to Sam were beeping rhythmically. Dean was studying them carefully like he understood what they meant, like he'd know if something was off._

_Fuller glanced from Dean to the figure lying in the hospital bed._

"_Dora?" he asked quietly – and a little nervously; he knew his question would probably annoy her._

"_Yes?"_

"_Are you… sure… about the abuse?"_

_Dean smirked at that, and Dora turned to scowl at him. "I can't be sure until we get a statement from Sam, of course, but his older injuries are consistent with it. Especially because I couldn't find medical records to match them."_

"_But… Dora…"_

"_What?" she snapped._

"_He's… Well, I thought he was a kid, the way Dean was talking about him, but he's an adult."_

"_Domestic abuse isn't limited to children."_

"_He's built like He-Man."_

"_Got girly hair like He-Man too," Dean intervened. "He's got a point, you know. Look at Sam. You really think I could get the jump on him?"_

"_I think if the abuse has been emotional as well as physical, he might not try too hard to save himself. Maybe you've managed to lower his sense of self-worth enough that he thinks he deserves it." Dean's eyes blazed, but before he could say anything, Dora went on, "If you want to stay here, I suggest you control yourself." She glanced at Fuller. "Can you stay here with him? I'll go find Rob."_

"_Sure."_

_She left the room. Fuller kept a wary eye on Dean. Sam _was _big and muscular, but Dora had been right about victims sometimes letting it happen. And if he was Dean's brother, the instinct not to fight back might be ingrained._

_Dean wasn't paying attention to him anymore. He was lowering himself into the chair by the bed, reaching out to brush stray strands of hair off his brother's face, and murmuring something too soft for Fuller to hear. His expression was intense, but whether in affection or in threat Fuller couldn't tell._

* * *

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	6. Tapping at My Chamber Door

**Disclaimer:** Not mine.

Thanks to SayLo, L.A.H.H, emebalia, criminally charmed, sarah, doyleshuny, SPN Mum, reannablue, Ange De La Misericorde and BranchSuper for the reviews.

* * *

**Chapter III: Tapping at My Chamber Door**

The storm that had started while Dean was driving had intensified, and that was the only reason they were still in the hotel. Sam's fever had risen quickly, barely even stopping at doctor fever and hospital fever in its headlong rush to get to Dean-killed-puppies-in-a-previous-life-and-this-is -his-punishment fever.

But the roads were impassable, and the idiots at the hospital had said that, no, they could _not _send air evacuation out to them in a raging thunderstorm, and while they understood Dean's anxiety for his brother, they had to insist that he stop calling them heartless soulless douchebags.

Dean made sure Sam was comfortable and asleep. Then he went downstairs to the front desk.

"No," the bored-looking girl said before he'd even had a chance to open his mouth. "It's still raining and it needs to stop raining before we can move anyone in or out." She made a face. "I don't even get it. It's never rained like this before. I tried to go outside to make sure the shutters were closed and the water's ankle-deep. Totally ruined my new boots." She frowned at Dean. "And no, we still don't have a doctor. Like I've told you, what, a hundred times already? The doctor isn't due to come until right before we open."

"Well, is there anything you can do?"

She sighed, looking sympathetic. "Look, I get it. You're brother's sick and we can't get him to help because of this stupid storm. But there's nothing to do but wait it out. Is he comfortable? I can have pillows and blankets and things sent up to you if you need them."

"He's fine," Dean said, because, other than the terrifyingly high fever, Sam _was_ fine. He wasn't delirious, when he was awake he spoke to Dean normally, he even said his headache was gone. He was just tired. "Just… Let me know if a doctor miraculously shows up."

He went back up to Sam, who was now awake and demanding his laptop so he could start going through the photographs. One hand to the back of his neck was all it took for Dean to shake his head firmly.

"Still running a fever, Sammy. No laptop."

"But, Dean," Sam said, as though _Dean _was the one being unreasonable, "I'm bored."

"You've been awake for four seconds. How can you be bored?"

"Actually, I've been awake for at least five minutes. You were downstairs flirting with Rhonda –"

"I wasn't flirting, and who the hell is Rhonda?"

"Girl on night shift at the desk? Blonde, blue eyes?"

"Dude, how do you even know her name? We haven't even _been _here a full night, and since this afternoon you've been stuck upstairs."

"I pay _attention_, Dean." Sam snuggled down. "Dude, go to sleep. You look exhausted."

"I will when you let me. I swear, you were less trouble when you were a toddler."

"Dean. I'm fine. You can sleep."

"You're hot enough to fry eggs on. If this freaking rain doesn't stop in the next five minutes, I'm going to get you to the hospital by boat."

"Where are you going to get a boat?"

"I'll get Rhonda to build me one."

Sam opened his mouth, probably to say something stupidly geeky involving Rhonda, Archimedes and boats, but before he could, somebody knocked sharply on the door.

Exchanging a glance with Sam, Dean went to see who it was.

Opening the door revealed a tall, dark-haired man, around Sam's age, wearing a massive greatcoat that hid most of his clothes. He had a black bowler hat and was carrying a little black bag.

"Yeah?" Dean said.

"Are you Dean Smith? You asked for a doctor?"

"Yeah, do you know any?"

"I am a doctor. Dr. Underhill at your service." He tried to step into the room, but Dean blocked him.

"You're a doctor?" he asked suspiciously. "What, from the eighteen hundreds? And what the hell kind of name is _Underhill_?"

"Mr. Smith –"

"Let me see your license."

Underhill frowned, just for a moment. Then he said, "My license is the fact that I am the only medical professional available to treat your brother until the storm blows itself out. If you want me to leave, I will."

Dean scowled. "Fine, come in."

Underhill walked past Dean into the room. Sam's eyes widened and he turned to Dean pleadingly.

Dean shook his head. "I don't like it either, but I don't want you getting sicker. Can't hurt to let him look at you."

Ignoring Dean, Underhill reached out and put a hand on Sam's forehead. Sam yelped and pushed himself away. Dean was there in an instant, keeping Sam from actually falling off the bed.

"Sammy? What's wrong?"

"Cold," Sam gasped, staring at Underhill. "Your hands are like ice."

Underhill shrugged, unconcerned. "It feels that way to you because of your fever." He pulled a stethoscope out of his bag. "I need to listen to your heart."

Ten minutes later, Underhill was handing Dean a bottle of small white pills. "Give him two of those. He'll be fine in the morning."

"What's wrong with him?"

"Nothing serious. He'll be fine." Underhill shook Dean's hand, and Dean fought the urge to flinch at how clammy it was. No wonder it had bothered Sam. "I'll come by in the morning. Good night, Mr. Smith."

Dean shut the door behind him.

"Dude," Sam said.

"Yeah, I know. Weirdo." Dean examined the bottle. "It doesn't even have a label," he told Sam. "Screw it. You're not taking these. For all we know he's a dealer looking to get himself a new client. Until we can get you to a hospital we're sticking to Tylenol."

* * *

A couple of hours later, the storm hadn't let up, and Sam had dozed off again. Dean appropriated his cell phone and loaded the pictures from the haunted house onto Sam's laptop. He might not know as much obscure lore as Sammy did, but he wasn't an idiot and he'd been part of enough summoning rituals to recognize the basic signs.

He kept at it as long as he could, but eventually he was sleepy enough that the red-painted symbols were blurring together.

Dean rubbed his eyes and got to his feet. Sammy could handle the rest of it in the morning. He stumbled in the direction of his bed, pausing long enough to palm Sam's cheek. It was damp with sweat. Dean let out a sigh of relief. The fever was breaking.

He collapsed onto his own bed and fell asleep.

* * *

A loud, incessant rapping woke Dean. He groaned and buried his head under his pillow. "See who it is, Sam." The rapping didn't stop. "_Sammy!_ Go find out –"

Dean cut himself off as the memory of the previous day came flooding back.

He scrambled out of bed, casting a quick glance at Sam, who was still asleep, before going to the door.

It was Underhill.

"You _again_? What the hell, man?"

"Good morning, Mr. Smith. I'm pleased to see you, too. Is your brother any better?"

"What? What time is it?"

"It's nine in the morning. You'd know if you drew the curtains and let some light in." Underhill pushed past him into the room. "Did he have a rough night?"

"No…" Dean said doubtfully. "No, he just slept through. Why?" Underhill ignored him in favour of resting his hand on Sam's forehead. Sam didn't stir. "Is he OK?" Underhill pursed his lips but didn't answer. "Dude? Is he OK?"

Underhill shook his head, reaching under the blanket for Sam's hand. Dean watched with uncomprehending eyes as the doctor rested a finger on his brother's pulse point.

"What?" he asked again, forcefully. "Dude, you can't just shake your head and not tell me what's going on. Is he OK? Is he getting worse? Last night I thought the fever was breaking."

Underhill laid Sam's hand down on the bed very gently, took off his hat, and turned to Dean. "I'm sorry."

"_What?_"

"He's… Your brother is in a better place."

Biting back the automatic response that heaven wasn't a better place for anyone except masochistic lunatics, not from what they'd seen of it, anyway, Dean said, "Don't be stupid."

His voice didn't shake, because there was no reason to be upset. The doctor was an ass who ought to have his medical degree rescinded, and Sam was _fine_.

"I'm sorry. I know this must be hard to accept –"

"Sam's fine. His fever was breaking last night. He wouldn't just up and die on me."

"Mr. Smith, I can give you something to calm you down –"

"Calm me _down_? You show up out of the blue, tell me my brother's dead in his bed _right next to me_, and you expect me to calm down?"

Underhill's eyes darkened. "Mr. Smith, I'm sorry. I know this is difficult. And I know you don't want to think of these things now, but we should remove the mortal remains, and perhaps you would consider a different room."

"We – _what_?"

"I can recommend an excellent undertaker –"

"Get out," Dean snarled.

"Mr. Smith, it is insanitary for you to share a room with a dead body –"

"I said get the _hell_ out. _Go_, before I turn _you _into a dead body." Dean took a step forward, grabbed Underhill, and shoved him out the door. "You show up here again and I will personally wring your neck, you hear me? And then I'll send you to the undertaker! You stay away from my brother!"

With one final glare, he slammed the door shut.

He was shaking by the time he got to Sam's side. It was ridiculous – _beyond _ridiculous, some quack with a stethoscope showing up and trying to tell him to embalm his brother – but he couldn't help a flicker of fear. You didn't need a medical degree to know when someone didn't have a heartbeat.

Trembling fingers found Sam's neck.

For a moment Dean thought there was nothing. His heart climbed up into his throat, tears building in his eyes –

And then he felt the thrum of Sam's pulse, a little uneven but still strong.

Dean did _not _sob in relief. He also didn't let his hand linger on Sam's jaw, feeling the life humming through his brother's veins.

What he _did _was heave himself to his feet and go downstairs with every intention of tracking Underhill down, ripping his head off and feeding _his _mortal remains to stray dogs. And then maybe doing the same to Lou West for letting evil dicks stay in his hotel and get close to Sammy.

Rhonda was gone now. The girl sitting at the front desk was hot, and normally Dean would have stopped to admire and flirt, but just then he had more important things on his mind.

"Underhill," he growled, slamming a hand down on the desk hard enough to make the drawers rattle. "Where is he?"

"Who?"

"Dr. Underhill," Dean repeated impatiently. He really wasn't in the mood for bureaucratic incompetence. "The idiot you sent up to look at my brother."

"Your – oh, Dean Smith!" She looked down at a notepad on her desk. "Rhonda told me you'd wanted to get your brother to a hospital, but then we got a call from you saying he was better."

"What? I didn't call."

"Dean Smith, Room 504?"

"Yeah, but –"

"You called. It's right here." Then she frowned. "Or maybe your brother called?"

"Sam's been out like a light all night. And don't change the subject! Where's Underhill?"

"I'm sorry, Mr. Smith, I don't know what you're talking about. We don't have an in-house doctor yet, as Rhonda must have told you last night. We couldn't have sent anyone to your room. There isn't anyone."

"Maybe Rhonda called him in from somewhere?"

"Nobody would have come out last night, Mr. Smith. Nobody _could _have come in that storm. Are you sure you really saw this person?"

Dean would have retorted, but he realized that this was getting him nowhere. Sam was alone in their room while he stood around here making small talk.

"Tell Lou I want talk to him," he said brusquely, walking away.

Fortunately, the elevator was waiting. Dean got in and jabbed the button for the fifth floor viciously. He stalked down the corridor to their room, opened the door, and –

Stopped short, cursing.

Sam's bed was empty.

* * *

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	7. Interlude 3

**Disclaimer:** Not mine.

**Author's Note:** I figured it made more sense to post the interlude along with the next chapter… So you get two updates today. *g*

Thanks to emebalia, BranchSuper, doyleshuny, Olive-Pizza, shookenuppepsi, criminally charmed, SPN Mum, AriSophAlmah, Scribble2Much, SayLo, L.A.H.H and Jane88 for the reviews!

* * *

**Interlude: Lady of Mercy Hospital, Baltimore**

"_Hey, kiddo," Dean murmured, so softly Fuller almost couldn't hear. He shook his head; he couldn't imagine _ever _addressing the man lying in the hospital bed as a kid. "Figures you'd be making trouble for me even now. I thought we'd be done with the CPS idiots when you turned eighteen, but…"_

_Fuller frowned. CPS? That _did _suggest a history of abuse, just as Dora had said._

"_How much older are you?" Fuller asked abruptly._

_Dean scowled at him. "Four years. Not that it's any of your business."_

"_Huh. That's more than old enough to… Any other relatives?"_

"_Our parents are dead."_

"_What about wives?" Fuller knew he was being nosy, but it was an important question. If Sam Smith had no close friends or family, it would make him more vulnerable to his big brother. "Girlfriends? Boyfriends?"_

_Dean rolled his eyes. "No. No girlfriends, no boyfriends, no lesbian life partners, no kids. Sam has an ex living in Texas, but that's it. You got any other inappropriate questions you need to ask about my critically injured baby brother?"_

"_Why? Does it bother you when someone else takes an interest in him?"_

_Dean's eyes darkened dangerously. "Listen, douchebag –"_

"_Is that why Sam doesn't have anyone else?" Fuller demanded, voice just as hard as Dean's. "Have you been scaring away anyone who wants to get close to him? Is that how you keep him tied to you?" Fuller knew he was overstepping his bounds, asking these things before they had proof, before Sam had even _woken_, but there was something about Dean Smith that got to him. "Is that why he can't get away from you? Because he has nobody to go to?"_

"_Shut up," Dean snarled. "The only reason I'm not punching your lights out is that I don't want to disturb Sam. Keep talking, though, and I might decide it's worth it."_

* * *

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	8. Deep into That Darkness Peering

**Disclaimer:** Still not mine.

Yup. Both at once. :-)

* * *

**Chapter IV: Deep into That Darkness Peering**

Sam woke to darkness.

As soon as he woke up, he knew that he was alone. Or, at least, that Dean wasn't with him, so he was probably alone. His headache was gone – completely gone – and it felt like his fever was, too.

He was lying on something hard, cold and smooth. Marble, or polished granite, maybe – he couldn't really tell in the dark.

He was on some kind of platform, a few inches from the edge. He sat up and swung his legs down. His feet found the ground without difficulty, and he stood.

"Hello?" he tried. His voice echoed in the darkness, but no one answered. "Awesome. Alone in the dark. This is like some B-grade horror movie."

Sam took a tentative step forward, and then another. His outstretched fingers encountered a ledge made of the same cold, hard thing he'd been lying on. He decided to call it marble until he knew better; it was silly to keep thinking of it as a cold, hard thing.

He ran his hands along the ledge. It curved sharply upwards. Sam followed the line of the marble until he came to something jutting out. His fingers found what was unmistakeably a face – nose, lips, eyes.

A tomb.

It was a marble tomb. Judging by the darkness, he was in a crypt.

Was he still in the hotel? He racked his brain, trying to remember if Lou had said anything about the old house he'd reconstructed having had a crypt. He couldn't think of anything, but it was possible. He couldn't be sure.

_Crap._

He didn't even know where he was.

But he was alive, and it seemed like he had plenty of air, so there was no need to panic. He just needed to wait until Dean found him. Dean would notice he was missing soon, if he hadn't already – Sam had no idea how long he'd been in the crypt – and Dean would track him down.

He felt in his pockets for his phone. He didn't have his main one, but his number three cell was in his pocket. Thank God he'd fallen asleep in his jeans. (Partly because of the phone, but also because it would have been incredibly embarrassing to stumble out of a crypt in his sweats.)

He pulled the phone out. As expected, he had no signal – he was probably underground – but the screen gave off enough light for him to get a look at his surroundings.

The tomb in front of him _was _marble, white marble, as far as he could see in the faint light. The face he'd found belonged to a carved angel that was hovering protectively over the name engraved near the top edge.

Geoffrey Unwin.

Sam shone the light around. The crypt was huge. He could see at least five marble monuments around him, and there were more lining the walls. The ceiling was high – he wouldn't be able to reach it even if he climbed up onto one of the slabs and stretched.

He couldn't see a door, but if he followed the wall he'd probably get to one eventually.

Sam used the light to guide him to the nearest wall and started walking along it. He'd barely taken a couple of steps when he felt the temperature in the room drop by a couple of degrees.

Sam sighed. He wasn't surprised – this was _his _life, after all, _naturally _all he had to do was be awake in a crypt for ghosts to start manifesting – but he was annoyed. You'd think they'd have the common courtesy to wait until he had a shotgun. Or even a salt-shaker.

He was pretty sure there wasn't anything here the ghost could use to choke him, which was good, because being choked by supernatural things was_ really_ getting old. On the other hand, the lack of rope, lamp cord or iron chain meant that he was probably going to end up being flung into those marble things, and they looked like they'd _hurt_.

Sam tightened his fingers around his phone (mainly out of instinct; he didn't have his Taurus so his phone would have to do) and waited.

"Sam," a soft, light woman's voice said. "Saaaamm."

"That would be me," Sam responded. If it was talking to him, maybe it would just tell him what it wanted and get out. "What's your name?"

"Sam. Oh, Sam. You wait for him." There was a glimmer in front of him, and then the ghost manifested. She was a young woman, long, dark hair, eyes so brown they were almost black, fringed with lashes that stood out starkly against her pale skin. "You wait. You wait, but he will not come."

"What are you talking about?"

"They abandon you." She took a step forward. Sam took a step back. She shook her head impatiently, like she thought he was being dense. "They always abandon you. They lock you living in your tomb and leave you there to die." Her eyes glimmered in the darkness. "Alone. Alone as your air runs out. Alone as your blood runs cold. All alone. _They leave you there._"

* * *

"What the hell do you mean you don't know?" Dean bellowed. "I was out of the room for ten minutes. _Ten minutes!_"

"Dean, please," Lou said. "I know you're worried –"

"Do you? Do you have any idea how worried I am right now? I left Sam asleep in bed while I went downstairs to find the creep who told me he was dead and tell him to lay off. I came back and he was _missing_. Gone. Vanished without a trace."

"Dean –"

"Did you take him? Is that why you're so calm about this?"

"_Dean! _I assure you I didn't –"

"You were full of all that Satan crap, upsetting Sam when you spoke to him. Any of your hunter friends tell you anything? If you have _any _idea where my brother is you tell me now or so help me –"

"Dean –"

"You did something, didn't you? You took Sam." Dean grabbed the front of Lou's shirt and shook him. "You tell me where he is right the hell now."

"Dean, I don't know where your brother is."

"You tell me or I'll make you." Dean's eyes narrowed. "Believe me, pal, you _don't _want me to make you. _Talk._"

"Dean, I swear to you, I _don't _know what happened to your brother."

"Fine." Dean released Lou, who fell back against the wall, gasping for breath and clutching his chest. Dean rolled his eyes. "Drama queen. You think I was asking hard questions, that's _nothing _to the kind of questions I'm going to ask if Sam tells me you kidnapped him." He pointed at Lou. "I'm going to look for my brother now. And I promise you, there is _no _place he could be where I _won't _find him. And if he tells me you so much as _looked _at him wrong…"

He let the words trail off.

He glared at Lou until he looked satisfactorily terrified and then stalked out of the room.

Something had taken Sam.

Dean Winchester was on the warpath.

* * *

He started by searching the hotel. Thoroughly. He started in the lobby and worked his way up. He finished up in their room.

He was looking around, biting his lip helplessly, when, on impulse, he went to the non-weapons equipment duffel (Sam's idea; he was the organized one – Dean would just have put all their hunting stuff in one bag, dropped it in the backseat, and called it good) and pulled out an EMF meter.

As soon as he turned it on, it went crazy.

Dean caught his breath.

There had been a ghost here. A ghost had taken Sam.

The knowledge made him feel calmer. More settled. It sucked that Sam was missing, but now that he knew something supernatural had him… Well, hunting down supernatural fuglies was what Dean Winchester did best.

* * *

Dean took the elevator back downstairs. Lou had told him he'd be with a friend in Conference Room B, which in Lou-speak apparently meant 'place where I'll meet the people I've conned into helping me for free'. He was about to burst in, because discussing how many gallons of beer they needed to have on tap for opening night could wait, but Sam was missing _now_.

Then he heard a noise.

It was a horrible, screeching, groaning, ripping, tearing, juddering noise that seemed to come from the bowels of the earth.

Or, Dean thought, from the basement of the building.

He considered checking with Lou, but decided against it. Every instinct told him that sound was connected to Sam's disappearance, and he'd learnt long ago that big-brother radar was far more reliable that witness statements, especially when the witness was Lou West. Sam was missing, _missing_, and the guy was sitting around discussing his opening night.

He didn't bother with the elevator. He hurtled down the stairs, taking them four at a time. When he opened the door at the other end, he found himself in the gym. A sign a few feet away indicated that the squash courts were to his left and the sauna and showers to his right.

The noise came again, louder, shrieking through the walls.

Dean ducked back inside the stairwell. The stairs further down were boarded up. Dean scoffed, half amusement and half derision – they thought a few wooden planks were going to stand in the way of a pissed-off hunter – and smashed through them with one sharp kick.

The level below was pitch-dark, and he had to slow down or risk breaking his ankle and being unable to help Sam. The walls were uneven, crumbling bricks.

As soon as he reached the sub-basement, the air turned cold. Ghost cold. Dean was sure he'd see his breath fogging in front of him if he could actually see anything at all.

There was a soft scraping sound, and then a crash.

"Sammy!" Dean yelled.

"Dean?"

Dean almost sobbed in relief. "Sammy, where are you?"

"Right here – wait." Dean heard footsteps, and then a faint light flashed on a few yards to his right. It was Sam's cell phone, and by the glow of its screen he could see Sam – a little banged-up, maybe, but not really the worse for wear. "_Dean._"

"Right here. What –"

The rest of Dean's question was lost as over two hundred pounds of hunter slammed into him.

"Oh, thank _God_," Sam breathed.

"Hey." Dean patted Sam's back. "Neither of us is dying. Right?"

"Yeah," Sam said, but he didn't seem eager to move. "Yeah, just… She said you wouldn't come for me."

"Who? There someone else in here?"

"A ghost. A woman. I don't know her name."

"And you believed her?" Dean tried not to let his hurt show. After everything that had happened, it _did _hurt that Sam would think Dean would just abandon him. "Really, Sam?"

Sam backed away. "Dean, you don't even get –"

"I don't get what? You left me in Purgatory –"

"I didn't know you were in Purgatory!"

"Did you even try to find out?"

"You think _that _was the problem?" Sam demanded furiously. "That I didn't want to find you?"

"If that wasn't, then why don't you _tell _me what the problem was, Sam!"

"_I thought you were dead!_" Sam yelled. "What, you think you disappeared and I moved in with Amelia the next day? It was _months _before I met her, Dean. I thought you were dead and I was this close – _this close_ – to finding a demon and draining it. I would have – I would have done it all again, I would have done _anything_. The things I would have done to get you back – they scared me, Dean. If I'd had any idea you were in Purgatory, I would have done everything I could, but I didn't know. I thought you were dead and all I could think of was – was finding a way to bring you back, but every way I could think of was going to make you hate me forever. And _he _kept telling me you wouldn't even want to look at me –"

"_He_? Who the hell is _he_?"

"Lucifer," Sam said, like it should have been the most obvious thing in the world.

"_What?_" Dean yelled. "Lucifer's back? You didn't think that was something I should _know_, moron?"

"He's not back!" Sam snapped. "He _was _back, OK? He was gone, I thought Cas had fixed it. But when you and Cas disappeared –"

"He came back?" Dean asked incredulously.

"I didn't have Stone Number One."

Just like that, the fight went out of Dean. Who was he kidding? At some level he got it. The only way he'd hung on to his sanity that year Sam had been in the Cage had been by getting out altogether, by putting everything that reminded him of Sam in the Impala, putting her under a tarp, and pretending desperately that his heart was whole.

"OK," he said softly. "I understand."

"Do you?"

"I may not understand everything about it. But I understand that you did the best you could."

"I don't know how to be a hunter without you, Dean." Sam's voice was tiny, and Dean could tell he thought it was a shameful admission. "I was so lost – and so furious at the world – if I'd let myself hunt, I wouldn't have had control."

They were back in total darkness now, Sam's cell phone screen shutting down after the requisite thirty seconds of inactivity, so Dean was relying solely on instinct when he reached out.

His hand found Sam's shoulder.

"I'm back, Sammy."

"I know."

"_We're _back."

"I know."

"So how about we blow this popsicle stand and hunt us down some restless spirits?"

Dean could sense Sam's grin. "Lead the way."

* * *

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	9. Interlude 4

**Disclaimer:** Nothing's mine.

Thanks to emebalia, L.A.H.H, hotshow, AriSophAlmah, firstcatfish, BranchSuper, lovejensenacklesforever, doyleshuny, criminally charmed, SayLo, SPN Mum, twomoms, KKBELVIS and Jeanny for the reviews and to Cheryl for the beta.

* * *

**Interlude: Lady of Mercy Hospital, Baltimore**

_A quiet cough diverted both men from the argument._

"_Rob," Fuller said._

_The man who'd come in behind Dora acknowledged him with a nod. "Nice to see you again, Jim. Wish it were better circumstances." He turned to Dean. "I'm Robert Hartley. I'll be your brother's attending while he's here."_

"_How is he?" Dean asked, and either he was a really good actor or he was really worried._

"_He came through surgery as well as could be hoped. We lost him on the table, but only for a very short time. He's a fighter."_

"_Yeah," Dean said, sounding proud now. "Yeah, he is. So he's going to be OK?"_

"_It was a severe injury. You know that. But he's breathing on his own, and, to be frank, that's more than I'd hoped for at this point. I thought we'd have to have him on a vent, at least tonight. What does worry me, though, is the head injury."_

"_Just tell me," Dean snapped._

"_Hairline fracture to his skull," Rob said. "I don't think there's any brain damage, but that isn't my area of expertise and I didn't want to put him through any more testing tonight. If all goes well, he should wake up on his own in a few hours and then we'll be able to get a better idea. I'll leave word for someone from Neurosciences to come by in the morning."_

"_He'll be fine," Dean said forcefully. "You don't know Sam. He's lived through worse than this."_

"_I'm sure he has. As I said, he does seem to be a fighter. We'll know more in the morning." Then Rob's face became serious. "There is one other thing I wanted to discuss with you."_

_Dean stiffened. "Is this about that abuse crap again? Because I'm telling you, one more person comes through here trying to tell me I've been secretly torturing my baby brother –"_

"_I'm not making any accusations. But try to look at things from my point of view, Mr. Smith. Dr. Jenkins and I both think Sam's earlier injuries are… unusual. We have a responsibility to our patient. I'm not necessarily saying _you _hurt him, but… Well. That's another thing we can deal with in the morning. Until then… I'm sorry, and I know you won't like this, but until then you cannot see your brother. I'm going to have to ask you to leave."_

* * *

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	10. And the Darkness Gave No Token

**Disclaimer:** Not mine.

Thanks to Cheryl for the beta.

* * *

**Chapter V: And the Darkness Gave No Token**

"Dean! I'm – not – _sick_."

"Yeah, well, you were spiking like a million degrees last night and then you were _missing_, so excuse me if I don't want to take chances."

Sam crossed his arms and looked set to start staring Dean down. Dean rolled his eyes and waited. Sam might be stubborn, but he didn't have a hope of outlasting his big brother when it was a question of his health.

Inevitably, Sam shook his head and gave in. "Fine. Make it quick."

"You know me." Dean handed Sam the thermometer. "Don't bite."

He stretched it out a bit to annoy Sam (seeing how quickly he could make the bitchface show up was a pastime that _never _got old) but in the end he accepted that Sam wasn't sick and let him go grab his laptop.

"What are we doing? Do we have a theory?"

"First I'm going through yesterday's pictures," Sam said. "Just in _case _there's something in the haunted house that woke the ghost, maybe something that got activated when I walked through. If that doesn't turn up anything, I'll start looking into other possibilities."

"You have anything to go by?"

"This place, to begin with. I can download all the records about it. And a name. Geoffrey Unwin. It was on one of the headstones in the crypt."

"OK," Dean said, not paying a lot of attention. Sam would do just fine with the research and he had more important things on his mind. "Sammy?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm… Look, I'm not trying to pick a fight. I meant it when I said I got that you did your best. But… Why did you believe her?"

"Who?"

"The ghost. When she said I wouldn't come for you, why did you believe her?"

Sam flushed. "I didn't. I mean, I –"

"I walked through the door and you hugged me."

"Yeah, OK." Sam shook his head. "I'm sorry. I didn't think you weren't going to come for me, not really. It was just… _Her. _And the way she said it. Like she knew something I didn't."

"Yeah, well, next time –"

"I'll remember I know something she doesn't," Sam said, smiling brightly at Dean.

Dean laughed. "Damn straight." He clapped Sam on the back, nudging him aside enough to pull up a chair next to him and peer over his shoulder. "What have we got?"

Sam pulled up the pictures Dean had loaded earlier. He raised an eyebrow when he saw the filename. "You couldn't think of anything better than _Hippie Crap for the Idiot_?"

"It's hippie crap and he's an idiot. It's a perfect name. Short and sweet."

"_You're _an idiot."

Sam started to go through the pictures. Dean stood it for ten minutes before it got to him. And he thought ten minutes was impressive. Dean was all for being thorough and professional, but Sam was going to the maximum zoom on every picture and studying it like it pixel by pixel like it had the secret to eternal life. There were limits.

"I'm going downstairs," he announced. "If the roads have improved we can at least get out of here for a while. Maybe make a trip into Baltimore. This place gives me the creeps."

"Everything gives you the creeps these days. Maybe you're getting too old for this."

"Laugh it up, Junior."

Left alone, Sam focused on the pictures, zooming, checking and moving on. He paused occasionally when something unfamiliar caught his eye. The first time he tried to look something up online, he realized Wi-Fi wasn't working. Neither were his first two phones. The number three cell had one bar but the connection was too slow to be any good.

Sighing, Sam called the front desk and was redirected to someone called Stan, who yelled about Lou's insistence on using sub-standard building materials that couldn't stand up to a tiny bit of rain and then asked if Sam was free and wanted to help him resurrect his server, which had died after being leaked on. Sam put the phone down quickly and got back to work, noting down any unfamiliar symbols to look at when he was connected again.

He didn't notice the air getting colder until he saw his breath fogging.

He sighed again. "Really? Here? Now?"

"Sam." It was the same eerie female voice. "Sam."

"Dean came for me," Sam pointed out, turning in his chair to face her. "You realize that? He came for me. He didn't leave me there to suffocate or whatever you were claiming he would."

"So young," she said sadly, which Sam thought was a little ironic considering that she looked like a teenager. "So innocent."

"We can help you," Sam said, because he had to say _something_. "What do you need? We can help. Whatever you're after – whatever unfinished business you have – we can help you. Dean and I, that's what we do."

She shook her head. "No rest."

"We can help you find rest."

She gave him the same impatient shake of her head she'd done down in the crypt. "No rest for you. No sleep. Never sleep." One ice-cold finger touched his chest. "He took me as I slept. If you sleep, you will die."

"Who _are _you?"

But she was gone.

* * *

"What the _hell_?" Dean said, staring at the – well, _road _wasn't really an accurate term to describe the stream of sludge outside the hotel.

"Tell me about it," Lou said morosely. "I was supposed to be getting all the paintings for the rooms today. I don't think that's going to be happening. And I don't really want to put the bedding down until the curtains are up."

"Sure. How long is it going to take for the road to be normal again?"

"Who the hell knows? If it clears up and we get some sunlight the road should dry out in a couple of hours. Not completely, but enough to drive. Doesn't look like sunlight, though." He heaved a sigh that sounded like the world was ending. "How are you and Sam getting on with the haunted house?"

"Sam's working on it. And, while we're on the subject, I had a question about that… You said it used to be the groundskeeper's cottage."

"Something like that. Maybe it was a carriage house or a mews or something, I don't know. I'm not really into that kind of stuff."

"Yeah, I know. So listen… It didn't seem that old. When Sam and I went there… I mean, you've obviously _gone _for the old look, with all those cobwebby things –"

"Oh, _God_!" Lou wailed. "The rain must have _ruined _my spiderwebs."

"Yeah, whatever. But it isn't an old building. It seemed totally new."

"Oh." Lou looked shifty. "Yes, well, I may have… exaggerated a little. The groundskeeper's cottage _was _there, but it was reduced to rubble in the same storm that hit the main house."

"So is there _any _of the original building in it?"

"The lower level. It would have been – the wine cellar, maybe, I don't know if the groundskeeper would have had his own wine cellar. Maybe he stored fruit or something. But we didn't touch the cellar. I've sealed it off; that was the only way the city would let me use the building the way I wanted to."

Dean sighed. "Fine. I'm going to have to go down there too."

"_Too?_"

"Yeah, we found the crypt in the hotel." Dean debated telling him about the ghost, but finally decided against it. No sense alarming the civilian. "You might want to…"

"What?" Lou prompted when Dean trailed off.

"Nothing."

It wasn't nothing, of course. Dean had been going to say _You might want to wall it off_, but if it had been walled off… That wouldn't have prevented him from getting to Sam, of course, but it would have taken him a while to figure out that there was something on the other side of the wall. And then he'd have had to blast through it with dynamite or something and Lou would've whined.

No, better for everyone that the sub-basement stayed wide open.

"You ever think of having a historian look at that?" he asked instead to change the subject. "There might be something important."

Lou snorted. "Are you kidding? I let those museum nuts in here and I'll never get the place back. They'll commandeer it for the Archaeological Society or Greenpeace or something and ban me from entering my own basement. And it's not like I'll be able to charge people to see it the way I do the haunted house. I mean, nobody would pay to see random headstones of people nobody even remembers."

Dean frowned. He didn't love museums in the unhealthy way Sam did, but Lou was starting to get on his nerves.

* * *

"You _again_?" Sam asked in exasperation. "Don't you ever get tired?"

"Stay awake."

"Right. If I sleep I die. I got that the first time. You mind telling me why? Or even who you are? What happened, you died in your sleep?"

"_No!_" The woman sounded furious. "No. Not in my sleep. I was _sleeping_. I was not dead. He took me away. He abandoned me." Huge, glimmering eyes met Sam's. "They will abandon you. They say they love you, but they always abandon you."

"Just _tell _me," Sam said quietly. "Tell me who you are. Let me help you. Is it Geoffrey Unwin? Are you related to him?"

"Unwin," she said slowly. "Unwin."

"Is that your name, too? Are you an Unwin? Did your family live here?"

"Live… Die. Die." She turned away. "Never sleep. Sam. Never sleep. They come for you when you sleep. If you sleep, you will die in your own tomb."

She disappeared.

The door opened.

"What?" Dean said. "You look like you saw a ghost."

Sam didn't respond to his smile. "I did. She was back."

"The woman from the crypt?" Sam nodded. "Crap. What the hell, Sam? Is she drawn to you or something?"

"Dude, I have no idea. I don't even know what she wants. I tried to ask her, but she just kept giving me some weird warning –"

"Warning? She was warning you about something? Is something bad going to happen?"

"She told me not to sleep because if I do I'll die – oh, don't be ridiculous, Dean!" Sam snapped, seeing Dean's look of horror. "She's a ghost. She's probably lost it after however many decades she's been trapped. It doesn't mean anything."

"Maybe, but we're not taking chances."

"Whatever. If she shows up again you can try talking to her. Anyway, what do the roads look like?"

"We're not getting out of here today. Why? You got some geek sidekick convention you need to go to tonight?"

"No." Sam scowled. "The Wi-Fi's shot and I'm barely getting a cell phone signal. I need to get someplace I can do some research. Figure out who Geoffrey Unwin is and maybe who the crazy woman is."

"She's not crazy."

"She says I'm going to die and suddenly she's not crazy?"

"She didn't hurt you, though, did she? You said she was trying to warn you. If she's looking out for you, she's sane enough for me."

"Freak," Sam muttered, rolling his eyes. "Maybe we can try the crypt. Go back with flashlights and equipment. The vault door opens from the inside and the outside, so it should be OK."

"Or you can go in and I'll wait outside just in case." Dean went to the window and leaned out. "And another thing… Lou told me the groundskeeper's cottage is mostly new but the cellar is the original one."

"I didn't see a cellar."

"You weren't looking for one. Lou seems to have just boarded it up as soon as construction was complete. Probably has one of those hidden trap doors that's impossible to find even when it _hasn't _been sealed off."

"There may not even be that. If he relaid the floor, he might not have left a way to go downstairs, especially if he wasn't planning to use it."

"So we have to break through his flooring?"

"I don't think Lou's going to like that."

"Lou's gone and woken something that made you sick –"

"You don't know that that was supernatural –"

"You were perfectly fine and then you spiked a scary fever and passed out and now you're fine again. That sound normal to you?"

"Fine," Sam muttered.

"Exactly. So, as I was saying, Lou's gone and woken something that made you sick and kidnapped you while you were sick. I don't give a damn what he likes or doesn't like. We'll look around for an entrance, but if we don't find one I'm dynamiting my way in and Lou can just deal."

"Sure. But before you get too eager with the explosives, let's check out the crypt. That might solve everything and then we won't need to wreck Lou's decor."

"What if I _want _to wreck Lou's decor?"

Sam sighed. He was doing that a lot lately. "Come on. Crypt."

* * *

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	11. Interlude 5

**Disclaimer:** Not mine.

Many thanks to emebalia, Jane88, doyleshuny, reannablue, twomoms, hotshow, BranchSuper, SayLo, SPN Mum and Olive-Pizza for the reviews!

* * *

**Interlude: Lady of Mercy Hospital, Baltimore**

"_At least you can still see him," Fuller offered, though he had no idea why he was trying to comfort Dean Smith. Whether or not he was an abuser, he was definitely one of the creepiest men Fuller had ever seen – and he was saying that after twenty years as a member of the city's law enforcement._

"_Yeah, right," Dean snorted. "I can see the door of the room where he is. They won't even let me near it in case Sam sees me in that tiny window and panics."_

"_Dora's just doing her job. And so's Rob."_

"_Keeping Sammy away from his big brother? It's working because he's out cold. The second he wakes up he's going to throw a bitchfit if I'm not there."_

"_When Sam wakes up, if he asks for you, I'm sure they'll let you see him. In the meantime why don't you try and relax? You're not helping anyone by getting worked up about it." Dean looked mutinous, and Fuller sighed. "Look at it this way… You said Sam has an ex living in Texas?"_

"_Yeah. So?"_

"_What if she were hurting Sam?"_

_Dean scoffed. "Have you _seen _Sam? She's like a quarter his size."_

"_But you're not."_

_Dean stared at him. Fuller had a feeling he'd either be getting an uppercut to his jaw or a manly pat on the back. He braced himself for either._

_Before anything could happen, Rob appeared, looking flustered and glaring at Dean. "Jim, good thing you're still here. Mr. Smith?"_

"_Yeah?" Dean said warily._

"_I have a man here who claims he _saw _you hurting Sam. He says you caused your brother's injuries."_

_Fuller's breath left him in a gasp. He'd been warming to Dean – he'd been feeling _sorry _for Dean – and all along –_

_His hand closed around Dean's arm. "I'm going to need you to come with me."_

"_The hell you are!" Dean spat. "I'm not going anywhere till I know Sam's going to be OK. This is ridiculous. It's some random guy's word against mine. You have no proof that _I'm _the one who's lying. You have no proof that Sam was abused at all, just some suspicions."_

_Rob's eyes narrowed. "Let's take this discussion to my office." _

"_I'm not leaving my little brother."_

* * *

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	12. For the Rare and Radiant Maiden

**Disclaimer: **Not mine.

* * *

**Chapter VI: For the Rare and Radiant Maiden**

This time they went down fully equipped. Dean waited outside the crypt, as he'd said he would, just in case the heavy door swung shut – or was shut by a vengeful ghost. Sam walked through the memorials to the dead, playing his flashlight beam across carvings and inscriptions.

It didn't take him long to find the slab where he'd woken. It was right next to Geoffrey Unwin's monument. There was a closed marble casket lying on the floor next to it. The casket was blank, with no decorations and not even a name carved on the gleaming white surface. A crack ran down the breadth of the lid. Sam fingered it, feeling the tiny bump.

That was when he saw the footprints.

They were scored into the stone of the crypt floor as though they'd been etched in acid. They led away from the marble slab.

Sam knelt to examine them closely. It was difficult to be certain because the stone seemed to have _melted _around them, but they appeared to have been made by a woman. A barefoot woman walking unsteadily, maybe staggering, away from the slab.

He followed them with his flashlight.

They led to the door. At the door, they stopped.

Sam let out a breath. "Dean?"

Dean must have known from the tone of his voice that he wasn't in trouble, because it was a moment before he appeared in the doorway. "Yeah? Find anything?"

Sam pointed down.

Dean followed the direction of his finger, letting out a soft breath when he saw the footprints.

"Can ghosts _do _that?"

"I don't know. I've never seen anything like it before."

"Yeah, me neither. Where do they start?"

"The slab… The one where I woke up. There's no body there but there's a coffin next to it… Maybe it was on the slab and somebody shifted it?"

"Probably Lou," Dean grunted. "Sounds like the kind of stupid thing he'd do." He touched one of the footprints, rubbing his finger along the ridge. "Do you think it was her? The ghost woman you've been seeing?"

"Probably. Who else could it be? And the first time I saw her, I'd just climbed off the slab. Her slab, I guess."

"So this is – _you_!"

The ghost woman was back, and this time she looked angry. Sam sensed her target a moment before she attacked, and he quickly stepped between her and Dean.

"No," he said firmly.

Dean was getting to his feet. Sam reached behind him with one hand and grabbed Dean's wrist to hold him in place. He felt Dean trying to pull away and tightened his grip.

"She's not going to hurt me," Sam said, watching the ghost float towards them. "But she seems to hate you for some reason."

"_Murderer_," the ghost hissed, glaring straight at Dean.

"Don't be ridiculous," Sam said. "My brother isn't a murderer. I told you before – if you tell us what you want, we might be able to help you find peace. But you have to let us."

"You trust him?" the ghost asked Sam.

He was startled enough at the direct question that his grip on Dean's wrist loosened. Dean promptly pulled his hand free and moved to stand next to Sam, muttering about idiot little brothers who thought they had the right to play human shield like they had some kind of freaking death wish, the freaks.

"_Do you trust him?_" the ghost repeated.

"Yes," Sam said calmly. "Why?"

"Foolish boy." She stuck out a pale finger and poked Sam in the chest. He shivered. "You cannot see. He is waiting." She glared at Dean. "He is waiting to kill you. He wants to be rid of you. He wants you to die painfully, choking for air, alone, terrified." She backed away and pointed at Dean. "I _know_. You will put him living in his tomb and laugh while he dies. _I know._"

"Listen –"

"Do not sleep. He will kill you if you sleep."

"Who –"

"Marguerite." Her voice echoed through the silence. "Remember me. Remember. I am Marguerite."

* * *

"She said I was going to kill you," Dean said numbly. He couldn't make his mind move beyond that thought. "She sounded like she _knew_."

"She was lying. Or just mistaken." Sam pushed a mug at him, but Dean didn't move to take it. "Dean, come on. Drink. It'll make you feel better."

"She said I was going to _kill _you."

"So don't, and then she'll know she was wrong." The red ceramic touched his knuckles, and Dean moved his hands away. "Really, Dean? You want to do this the hard way?"

Dean gave Sam a half-hearted scowl. Sam responded with Bitchface Number Twenty-Three: Older Brothers Are Stupid (Version Twelve). Then he got up, came around the table, seized the mug and thrust it in Dean's face.

"Sam!" Dean protested.

"Drink."

Faced with choosing between _drinking _the freaking coffee and the humiliation of having Sammy force-feed it to him, Dean grabbed the mug and took a swallow. It burnt his tongue, but it made him feel surprisingly better.

Or maybe the feeling better was because Sammy had sat down on the bed, knee bumping his, and was watching him anxiously. Dean had all but forgotten what that was like.

"You OK now?" Sam asked.

"She said I was going to kill you."

"Are we still on that? She was a ghost, Dean. They say a lot of crap. You can't let it get to you. You're the one who taught me that, remember?" Sam patted his knee. "She doesn't know you. I do. I know you're not going to hurt me." He got to his feet and went back around the table. Dean couldn't help a momentary flash of worry – had Sam moved because the _moment _was over, or because he didn't want to be close to Dean? "I spoke to Stan. He said Wi-Fi should be up and running in a couple of hours. That gives us time to check out the cellar of the groundskeeper's cottage. There might be letters or journals or something helpful."

"I don't know," Dean mumbled.

Sam stared at him, and then nodded. "Yeah, maybe you should stay here." Dean couldn't help a tiny flinch, and Sam said, "Not saying I don't trust you, man. That isn't it. But you need to get some rest. And some food."

"I'm not tired."

"Dean. I was sick last night. When you woke up this morning some weirdo told you I was dead. Then I disappeared. And now the ghost has you freaked out. You've been frantic with worry for pretty much the last twenty-four hours. I'll stop by the front desk and ask them to send you something to eat – it'll probably suck, but it'll be better than waiting for someone to deliver from Baltimore. Eat it and then get some sleep."

"But – you – she said –"

"Look, even if she was right, she said I'm in danger if I go to sleep. I'm not going to sleep. I'm going to try to find a way to get into the cellar of Lou's haunted house, and if I can't find a door I'm going to take a hatchet to the floor. I'll be fine. You stay here and get some sleep and I'll be back before you're awake."

Dean sighed. He really was tired.

"Fine," he said. "But you take your phone and call me if there's any funny business. Are you getting a signal?"

"Not on my main phone, but my other cell and my _other _other cell have three bars now."

"Good. Take them both."

* * *

The second time Sam stepped inside the grounds of the haunted house, he was far more alert. This wasn't a game anymore. This wasn't just about making sure Astra hadn't accidentally drawn something that would summon Death when drunk teenagers inevitably broke in with scented candles and rituals they'd found on the Internet.

There was a ghost, a _real _ghost, and this was serious.

Sam walked around the perimeter. If it was an old house, it was more than likely that there was a second entrance to the cellar from outside the building. In that case there was a good chance it hadn't been plastered over when Lou had done the renovations.

He hit paydirt – literally – when his boot found something that felt smooth under the layer of topsoil. He dropped to his knees, making quick work of brushing off the earth to reveal a wooden trapdoor that was in surprisingly good condition for its age. It was worn around the edges, and the storm had caked soil into the cracks.

The rusty lock on the iron latch hadn't stood the years as well. Sam smashed it with the butt of his gun, and then he was pulling back the wood.

He shone his flashlight in. It was a short drop. Sam landed lightly, sneezing when his feet raised dust. He heard a squeaking sound, followed by something skittering into the shadows. Rats. Dean would hate this place.

He looked around. The room was big, probably extending under the entire building. There were four huge barrels stacked in one corner. He went to them and smelt the sharp tang of wine in the musty air. He considered prying the lid off one of them – from the strength of the aroma, Sam was willing to bet there was at least a couple of inches of _very _old wine in the bottom.

He shook his head. It was unlikely that the ghost was here for the alcohol.

He shone his flashlight around. The opposite wall was shelved. The shelves were empty now but Sam guessed they'd once held fruit, or maybe bottles of preserves.

It was when he turned the beam to the floor that he noticed the loose board.

It was old and rotten and it came up easily. Underneath was a flat parcel wrapped in oilskin. Sam pulled it out. The oilskin was stiff and cracking after years of being buried. He opened it carefully, revealing a sheaf of paper.

Sam just had time to notice that the top one was a letter. Then the pain hit.

It was blinding and immediate, pulsing through his head like someone was trying to drill through his skull into his brain. Sam just managed not to drop the oilskin bundle.

He pressed his free hand to his head. It didn't help with the pain but at least he felt able to think.

He had to get out. He had to get _out_, and maybe the fresh air would chase away the little men sitting inside his head with power tools, but even if it didn't, he could call Dean to come get him. Dean would come, but Sam had to get out first, because there was no way Dean would be able to lift him through that trapdoor.

Sam stuffed the parcel into his jacket and staggered to the little rectangle of light.

He barely made the jump. He would have made it easily if he'd been at one hundred percent. As it was, he just managed to snag the lip of the opening with his fingers and heave himself out.

The sunlight made it worse. He shut the trapdoor with his eyes scrunched tightly closed. Then he found his phone and hit Speed Dial 1.

Dean picked up on the first ring. "Hello?"

"_Dean?_"

He heard a sharp intake of breath. "Sit tight, kiddo. I'm on my way."

Sam forced himself to stay sitting, but he couldn't keep from bringing his knees up and burying his face in them to try futilely to block out the sunlight.

Fortunately, he didn't have to try very long before there was a warm hand on his back. Sam relaxed into the touch, mumbling drowsily, "How'd you get here so soon?"

"I'm Batman." Dean didn't try to make him move, didn't do anything other than rub his back. Sam was unspeakably grateful. "What happened, Sammy? Something get you? You hurt anywhere I should know about?"

Sam turned his face into Dean's shoulder. It helped block out the sunlight, but it didn't do anything for Dean's worry. Sam let Dean triage him; that was easier than answering. When Dean had finally figured out that he wasn't physically hurt, his hand slid into Sam's hair.

"Headache?" Dean asked.

"Mmmph."

"Bad, huh? What happened? No, actually, never mind. We'll figure out what happened later. First we need to get you back inside. Come on." Dean's arm came around his shoulders. "I'm not carrying you when you're not dying, Gigantor. C'mon, Sammy. On your feet."

Sam let Dean pull him up. The next several minutes passed in a haze of pain and a world that kept sliding in and out of focus and Dean's voice hissing, "He's freaking _fine_, he just needs some rest. Now get _out _of my way before I _make _you."

Then there was a mercifully dim room, a pillow that smelt suspiciously like Dean's leather jacket, and a cool, damp cloth on his head.

Sam opened his eyes. Dean was a dark shadow perched on the edge of his bed.

"Hey," Dean said softly. "Better?"

Sam nodded. "Thanks."

"What happened? Did you find anything?"

"Yeah." Sam started to sit up, but Dean pushed him down firmly. "In my jacket."

"Wait. I'll get it." Dean disappeared from his field of vision. Sam heard fumbling, and then Dean was back. "This?" he asked, holding up the oilskin package.

"Yeah."

Dean peeled back the oilskin and lifted the first letter.

"Read it out loud," Sam mumbled.

Dean nodded, turning on the bedside lamp and shifting to block the light. "My dear Robert, I met Andrew at Mrs. Tafferty's luncheon yesterday. I was most distressed to hear about Marguerite."

Wide green eyes met Sam's.

"The same Marguerite?"

"Read the rest."

* * *

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	13. Interlude 6

**Disclaimer: **Not mine.

**Interlude: Lady of Mercy Hospital, Baltimore**

"_Mr. Smith," Fuller said, "given that we now have a witness, you realize we cannot allow you to remain with your victim."_

_Dean looked like he was about to start throwing punches, but a sudden noise from Sam's room stopped everyone short. One of the monitors was going off shrilly._

_Rob hurried inside. Dean followed. Fuller tried to hold him back but it was like holding back an avalanche._

"_What's wrong?" Dean snapped at the worried doctor._

"_I'm not sure. His heart rate shot up but there's no reason –"_

"_Crap," Dean said. "He's having a nightmare."_

_Rob looked doubtful. "Nightmares can't usually cause something like this –"_

"_You don't know Sammy's nightmares." Dean pulled away from Fuller's restraining arm and flung himself onto the bed. Before anyone could stop him, he had one hand on Sam's chest and one in his hair and was leaning forward to speak to him._

"_Mr. Smith, we can't allow –"_

"_I have to insist –"_

"_Shut the hell up," Dean growled, before turning his attention to Sam. "Hey. It's OK, kiddo. Ignore them, they're stupid. I'm here." He brushed hair off Sam's face. "I'm right here, Sammy, and I'm not going anywhere. I'm going to stay right here. I'm not going to leave you." The hand on Sam's chest rubbed gently. "We're OK."_

_Sam didn't wake up, but his heart rate went back to normal._

_Fuller was no doctor, but Sam looked like he was resting more easily too._

_He met Rob's eyes, reading the same astonishment he knew was in his own. Neither of them had expected this._

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	14. This I Sat Engaged in Guessing

**Disclaimer:** Nothing's mine.

I'm not even going to make excuses. It was awful of me to leave you on this for so long, and you have my apologies.

Thanks to hotshow, emebalia, Olive-Pizza, pinkbelle, shookenuppepsi, BranchSuper, reannablue, SPN Mum, isabelincoln, Holliday1081, godsdaughter77 and twinklingeyes07 for the reviews.

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**Chapter VII: This I Sat Engaged in Guessing**

_My dear Robert,_

_I met Andrew at Mrs. Tafferty's luncheon yesterday. I was most distressed to hear about Marguerite. Her illness has been a source of worry to us all, but I had hoped that the specialist would help._

_I understand, of course, why you chose not to follow his advice. The idea of sweet Marguerite in one of those dreadful asylums is unthinkable. She is harmless, poor innocent. I only wish I could help in some way. Virginia is as grieved as I am. You know how fond she has always been of dear Marguerite._

_I hope to see you on Saturday. Until then I remain,_

_Your affectionate friend,_

_Edgar_

Sam sat up, gently pushing away Dean's restraining hands. His brain was no longer trying to pound out of his skull.

"Is there a date?"

"January 5, 1835." Dean glanced at Sam. "Right time?"

"It could be. Lou said this place collapsed in the 1830s. But – oh, this doesn't make any sense. So this woman, Marguerite… She obviously had some sort of problem."

"She was crazy, according to this."

"She might not have been. A lot of things were diagnosed as insanity back then. It could have a mental health issue, or it could have been something like epilepsy." Sam shivered.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"Sam."

"It's just… Don't freak out, OK? But… but one of the times Lucifer was… You know, trying to be _you_, he said –"

"He wanted to put you in a loony bin." Dean's voice was flat with the realization.

Sam flinched. "Something like that."

Dean shook his head. Sure, sometimes he was tempted to put Sam on a leash, just to keep him out of trouble, but the idea of his sweet, innocent baby brother, who _still _blushed when women hit on him, being held by doctors who'd poke him and prod him and restrain him and ask him questions…

He squeezed Sam's knee. "_Never._"

"I would have understood," Sam said softly.

Dean couldn't help the flare of anger. He knew he wasn't perfect, and he knew better than anyone that he'd made mistakes, but it still hurt to think his brother doubted him. "Nice to know that's the kind of jerk you think I am, Sammy."

"_Dean._" Sam shook his head. "That's not what I meant. I… just… I didn't want to be a burden, and –"

"Finish that sentence and I'll break your jaw."

Sam sighed. "I'm sorry. Can we not?"

_Can we not fight? _Dean finished Sam's plea in his head. He hesitated before nodding and tousling Sam's hair. Sam would normally have objected, but this time he just ducked his head to let Dean do it.

The anger was replaced by warmth.

"You up to reading the rest?" Dean asked. "I can take over going over the voodoo girl's markings. Not much to that anyway, and I'll ask you if there's anything in –" His tongue trembled on _Enochian_, but he couldn't joke about anything involving Sam in the Cage, so he finished with, "Mandarin."

"Jerk," Sam said lightly, taking the letters. "Yeah, I've got this. You deal with the photographs."

"Food first."

"You've had lunch!" Sam protested.

"Yeah, but you haven't. Don't think I haven't been watching you. Come on, brat. No research until you eat your cheeseburger."

"How do you think we're going to get cheeseburgers here?"

"Road's dried out enough for us to get back to that diner. And if we're lucky, the Internet's going to be working by the time we're back. Come on, Samantha. That geekiness needs sustenance."

* * *

Dean could tell Sam still wasn't completely well. He tried to hide it, but Dean hadn't been a big brother as long as he had without the ability to read the signs.

His hair flopping into his eyes made him look enough of a kid that the waitresses cooed over him before flirting with Dean. And if Dean fussed over Sam a little more than usual, that was just to impress those waitresses, who were now falling over each other to give him their phone numbers. (And also maybe because once they realized what Dean wanted, they went all-out to try to tempt Sam to eat and he was too polite to ignore them the way he would Dean.)

Eventually Sam ate enough to satisfy Dean. Nodding his thanks to the trio of Wendy, Andrea and Megan, who'd been the most helpful, he hustled Sam out.

The drive back was relaxed. Dean didn't drive too fast, because the road was still a little slippery. Sam dozed in the passenger seat, occasionally waking just long enough to complain about Dean's choice of music before falling asleep again. It would have been annoying if it hadn't been Sammy.

When he parked in front of the hotel, Dean leaned over to smack Sam's arm. "Wake up, princess. We're here."

Sam stirred, blinking blearily at Dean before turning to look at the hotel entrance.

His eyes went wide.

"Of course… I've been so _stupid_."

He was out of the car and hurtling inside before Dean could stop him. Dean rolled his eyes, locked the Impala, and followed at a more normal pace. His big-brother radar wasn't pinging, so Sam wasn't in trouble. Probably just excited at the thought of having an emotional reunion with his laptop.

He had a look around just in case, to see if he could spot whatever had Sam all worked up.

There was nothing. Just some potted plants lining the driveway, a moving van parked halfway down the dirt track leading to the back entrance, and an expanse of fresh-laid lawn. The breeze was picking up, and the wooden sign over the main door creaked and swung as Dean made his way into the lobby.

Sam was already upstairs when Dean pressed the button for the elevator.

He waited for it to come down. This wasn't like last time. There was no blind panic, no need to take the stairs because some idiot was holding the elevator up on the fifth floor –

Dean stopped short, staring at the yellow numbers as they lit up over the elevator doors.

They were the only occupants of the fifth floor. Yesterday he'd pressed the button and the elevator hadn't shown up and he'd taken the stairs. It was true he'd been impatient – he'd known in his gut that Sammy needed him – but he hadn't been _that _impatient, and Sam had been in bed, fast asleep.

Who had been holding up the elevator?

Someone who didn't want him to get to Sam, obviously, but –

The elevator pinged. The doors slid open.

Dean stepped through and pushed the button for the fifth floor.

Someone – _something?_ – had deliberately held the elevator on the fifth floor, trying to keep him from getting to Sam – or maybe trying to slow him down. Who? Marguerite? It was possible, maybe she could manipulate electricity in some way. Some ghosts could… But Marguerite seemed to want to help Sam, not keep him away from his big brother. Lou? Why would Lou try to hurt Sam? That made no sense.

The elevator pinged for the fifth floor.

The doors opened.

Dr. Underhill was on the other side.

"_You_," Dean growled as he stepped out of the elevator, hands itching to grab Underhill and fling him out one of the windows. "What the _hell _are you doing here? Have you been bothering Sam?"

"Say instead that your brother has been bothering _me_," Underhill said calmly, stepping around Dean and into the elevator just before it closed.

Dean considered following him, but he had the sudden urge to check on Sam.

When he found his brother slumped in a chair cradling his head, he was glad he'd taken that call.

"How bad?" he asked, squeezing Sam's shoulder.

"Not… Not that bad, really." Sam lifted his head. "_Really_, Dean. I – I'm just tired." He cast a longing glance at his bed. "_Really _tired."

Dean's senses went straight to high alert. "Don't sleep." He couldn't believe he was saying that. That right there was a sign of how much life hated them. Under any other circumstances Dean would be greeting that statement with a cheer and practically _pushing _Sam into his bed, but right on the heels of Dr. Underhill's appearance and Marguerite telling Sam he'd die if he slept? "Don't you dare sleep. I'll make you coffee."

It took him a moment to figure out the cappuccino machine. He could have used the vending machine down the hall, but he had no intention of leaving the room.

"Here," he said at last, when he'd miraculously managed to produce a decent cappuccino covered in a layer of brown and white froth. "All girly, just the way you like it. Drink."

"Dean." Sam took the coffee and took a sip. "It's great. Thanks."

"Don't thank me, just stay awake."

"Dean, I'm sure she was –"

"You finish that sentence with _wrong_ and I'm going to kick your ass. But not hard enough for you to pass out. Are you insane, Sam? We're not taking risks."

Sam sighed. "OK. I guess I'd better stay in this horrible uncomfortable chair then."

"Sounds like a good idea," Dean said smirking.

Sam glared at him, but his eyes softened when Dean pulled up a chair of his own instead of lounging on the sofa or his bed like he would normally have done. Dean shook his head. He might rag on Sam sometimes, that was his big-brother right, but to curl up all comfortable with his pillows while Sam had to fight sleep in a chair about six sizes too small for him? Dean wasn't that cruel.

"C'mon, kiddo." He handed Sam the little oilskin packet of letters. "Sooner you get through these, sooner we can waste the spirits and get some sleep."

"Oh." Sam ran a hand through his hair. "Oh. Yeah. I think… I think I might know what this is. But I suppose I should go through the letters to be sure. And they might tell us who we're after because it's… It has to be him. I don't think it's Madeline."

"Madeline?"

"Marguerite," Sam said with a sigh. "Sorry. I'm sleepy. I meant Marguerite."

"Sammy, what's going on?"

Sam waved vaguely at the coffee table. There was nothing on it, but there was a shelf underneath and when Dean ducked to get a look, he saw a collection of books.

He took them out, frowning. They were horror stories and novels, all by different writers. He supposed it fit the theme. Get people good and spooked before sending them to the haunted house.

Then he realized what Sam had meant to tell him.

Of course. He might not be a book-loving weirdo like Sam was, but he was a _hunter_. He knew this. Of _course_ he knew this.

He looked up to see Sam watching him. Sam was smiling, like he knew Dean had made the connection and they didn't need words anymore. But Dean did need words, because he'd made the connection but Sam looked like he'd figured out the whole story, including where the body was buried and how many hunters it would take to dig it up.

Before Dean could say so, Sam yawned, and all thoughts of the case went out of his head.

"Time's it?" Sam mumbled.

"About eight. It's been a freaking long day." He nudged Sam's knee. "Come on, Samantha. You can do this. You just need to last through the night. You'll be fine in the morning."

"How do you know that?"

Dean _didn't_ know that, what he knew was that Sam had damn well _better _be fine in the morning or Dean was going to kill Lou, Garth and all their friends. But he could hardly tell Sam that.

"Because your headache and fever were both gone when you woke up this morning. And insomnia is your natural state, so as soon as you stop being sick, you'll also stop being sleepy."

Sam didn't look convinced. "I guess."

"Come on," Dean repeated, hauling Sam up and dragging him to the couch. "Come here. You need a break."

"I haven't even started yet."

Dean dropped Sam on the couch, sat next to him, and took the package out of his hands. He removed the first letter – the one they'd read already – and handed Sam the second one. "Read that." Sam nodded. "Out loud. That way I'll know you're awake."

Sam made a face, but he obeyed. He sounded so tired that Dean didn't object when Sam leaned into his side. He slipped an arm around his brother, _only _so that he could poke him in the ribs if he started to fall asleep.

The next few letters didn't give them much, other than the knowledge that the Unwins – the family that had lived here – had been seriously creepy. Respectable enough on the surface, but insanity ran in the family. Geoffrey Unwin, it turned out, was Robert's father. His younger brother had had fits of madness, and he'd lived most of his life locked in the attic for his own safety (although it seemed that Edgar and Robert both agreed that Marguerite didn't need to be locked up). Sam shuddered at that, and Dean wanted to stroke his back but knew that would only make him sleepier. He settled for tightening his grip a little.

"I would never have done that to you, Sammy."

Sam opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, someone knocked. Dean sighed, making sure Sam was up to supporting himself before he pulled away and went to see who it was. It had better not be –

Freaking _Underhill_.

"_What?_" Dean growled.

"How is Sam?" He strode past Dean into the room, to the couch where Sam was now curled up against the arm and watching them with half-open eyes. He didn't flinch when Underhill put a hand on his head, though his eyes narrowed. "Sam. You're feverish."

"Don't be ridiculous," Dean snapped.

Sam had been right up in his space for the past half-hour. He would have known if the kid had a fever.

All the same, he hurried to Sam and palmed his cheek, just to be certain –

He hissed. Sam was burning up. He hadn't been a minute ago, Dean _knew _that. And now he was spiking a dangerous fever, shutting his eyes and turning his face into Dean's hand the way he only did when he was feeling really, _really _miserable.

"What did you do to him?" Dean asked furiously.

Underhill smiled. It had too many teeth. "I did nothing to him. Your brother is of a weak disposition, Mr. Smith. Medicine can only go so far. Science cannot help a man who lacks the strength to fight for his own life." Dean clenched his free hand into a fist, ready to throw a punch. "There is nothing you can do for him."

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	15. Interlude 7

**Disclaimer: **Not mine.

I am so sorry about the lateness of this! I'll try to get the last few updates up sooner.

Many thanks to emebalia, hotshow, BranchSuper, shookenuppepsi, SPN Mum, Olive-Pizza, 88, criminally charmed, twinklingeyes07, Holliday1081, sammynanci and JaniceC678 for the reviews.

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**Interlude: Lady of Mercy Hospital, Baltimore**

_After Dean had managed to calm his brother down, Rob was far more willing to let him stay in the room, at least until they got Sam's statement. Fuller could have left – he wasn't officially on duty, after all, and it wasn't even Dora's case anymore now that Rob was the attending – but he stayed too. He knew that in the absence of supervision Rob might have to withdraw his permission for Dean to sit in Sam's room, and he couldn't bring himself to let that happen._

_That was why Fuller was there when Sam Smith finally woke up._

_The first warning sign was when Dean, who had dozed off, jerked and opened his eyes. At Fuller's questioning glance, he shook his head._

"_Everything's fine. He's going to wake up."_

_Fuller raised an eyebrow. "You know that telepathically?"_

"_You have no idea how loud the kid's thinking can get." Dean got out of his chair and sat on the edge of the bed. "Hey. Time to wake up, Sammy. Not polite to make everyone wait like this. Didn't I teach you better?"_

_Sam blinked, and then drowsy hazel eyes were looking up at Dean. Fuller was alert for any sign of nervousness or discomfort – all said and done, Sam might be a victim of abuse, and he was going to do his job – but Sam just sighed and smiled trustfully up at his big brother._

"_Hospital?" he mumbled, voice raspy from disuse._

"_Yeah. You got a bit banged up." Dean patted Sam's chest. "You gave me a scare, kiddo."_

"_Sorry."_

"_You should be." But Dean's smile was taking any sting out of his words. He reached over Sam for the call button. "Going to let the nurses know you're awake, OK? They'll probably want to check your blood pressure or O2 sats or whatever it is they're checking these days."_

_A nurse bustled in, and Rob was just a step behind her._

"_You're awake," he said, unsmiling. "I have to speak to you, Sam." He glanced at Dean. "Alone."_

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	16. Then, Methought, the Air Grew Denser

**Disclaimer:** Not mine.

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**Chapter VIII: Then, Methought, the Air Grew Denser**

Dean was torn between the need to tend to Sam and the animalistic urge to kill Underhill. Finally logic won out – killing Underhill would probably snap whatever he was doing to Sam and then he could sort Sam out in peace.

With a final pat to the shoulder, he let Sam go.

Underhill was too fast for him, though. He was already at the door – Dean hadn't even seen him _move_, but he'd been focused on Sam's raspy breathing – and out. The door slammed shut.

And now Dean was agonizing.

He should go after Underhill – he _should_. Whatever was going on, he was sure the creepy son of a bitch had something to do with it. But he couldn't leave Sam alone. He had to keep Sam awake, keep him conscious, keep him talking.

"Bluetooth," Sam mumbled.

"What?"

Sam nodded in the direction of the non-weapons equipment duffel. "All those earpieces we got from Frank. They're still in there. Take one and keep it connected. That'll leave your hands free and I'll be able to tell you right away if something's wrong." Dean hesitated, and Sam added, "You know you have to go after him, Dean. And I'd go with you but I'd probably be more of a hindrance right now."

"But what if something happens?"

"You'll hear it."

"I won't be _here_."

"You can come back." Dean wasn't convinced. "Come on, Dean. It's not like we have a lot of options here. Look, I'll keep myself awake – finish the research – and you see if you can track Underhill down. It's the only way we're going to end this."

"Yeah." Dean didn't like it, but he had to admit Sam was right. "Yeah, OK."

But it was a year and a half since he'd had Sam back like _this_, had not just Sam but Sam's total trust and their ability to practically read each other's minds and… And there was a part of him that couldn't bear the thought of leaving Sam alone and vulnerable. Not even if that was the sensible thing to do.

He felt a flare of anger against whatever or whoever was causing this. This was supposed to be a routine research job. There wasn't supposed to be any _danger_.

Sam's head wasn't supposed to be resting on Dean's ribs like he didn't have the strength to hold it up anymore.

Sam fisted a handful of his shirt.

"I know," Sam said, dewy eyes looking up at him. "I _know_. Just go get him, Dean."

* * *

_My dear Robert,_

_Virginia and I were delighted to see you and Marguerite at dinner last night. Marguerite appeared in excellent health. The new treatment must suit her._

_Virginia tells me that Marguerite is not entirely pleased with the new regimen. While I understand your decision, I do sympathise with her. To see a proud and fierce spirit like hers brought low by such an insidious enemy… Poor Marguerite! If there were only something we could do to ease her suffering._

_I was most interested in what you said about Unwin Place. As you know, I have long been fascinated by the mysterious and the macabre. Do you truly believe that Unwin Place – the home where you grew up, the home where generations of your family grew up – has developed independent will? It would not surprise me if that were the case. How many secrets must have been whispered into pillows! How many have loved and lost! If any house were to live, it would be Unwin Place._

_But we shall discuss that in more detail when next we meet._

_Until then I remain,_

_Your affectionate friend,_

_Edgar_

Sam sighed and put the letter aside, trying to ignore his drowsiness and throbbing head. It made sense, the dates fit, and he had most of the story now. All he needed to do was find out where Robert was buried. Because, if he was right, it couldn't be in the crypt. No, Robert had to be the one Unwin buried outside the family vault.

And then, suddenly, he knew.

Dean must have heard his sharp intake of breath, because his voice crackled in Sam's ear. "Hey. You OK?"

"Fine," Sam said. "You find Underhill yet?"

"He's nowhere in sight. You think he's…"

"Supernatural?" Sam asked. "I don't know. It felt normal enough every time he touched me, except for his hands being that cold. He _could _be. It would make sense." He rubbed his head again. "But… I think I know _who_,Dean. But I don't know _why_."

"You'll get there," Dean said confidently.

"Yeah, I guess… And Dean?"

"Yeah?"

"Tell Lou we're going to have to do some damage to his property."

Dean's cackle was evil glee. "Now you're talking."

Sam smiled. They were almost done. But he still needed confirmation, so he pulled the bottom letter from the pile and spread it out to read.

* * *

Dean was doing a floor-by-floor walkthrough with the EMF detector. He didn't think they'd need it, but Underhill was nowhere in sight, and this was the best way Dean could think of to track him down. If he was supernatural.

Dean had figured out that the _Edgar _in the letters was Edgar Allan Poe, he wasn't stupid. But he also wasn't a geek whose only action in high school had been with his AP reading list. And Underhill, even if he was a ghost, obviously wasn't _Poe's _ghost. So Dean didn't know _exactly _what was going on, but he trusted Sammy to be right.

On the third floor, the EMF detector started to hum.

Dean frowned, walking slowly down the corridor. The hum grew louder and louder, and by the time he reached the last room down, it was going crazy.

Dean could hear voices – or at least _a _voice – on the other side of the door.

He considered knocking, changed his mind, and kicked the door open. Lou was only going for the look of colonial architecture, not for the actual solidity. The door splintered with a satisfying crack.

Lou West was on the other side.

* * *

The letters were starting to blur in front of Sam's face. He rubbed his eyes, and it helped for a moment, but it wasn't long before it all merged together again.

And what was _with _people in the nineteenth century anyway? Why couldn't they use normal handwriting instead of absurd loopy scrawls that no normal person could decipher?

Sam squeezed his eyes shut when a stab of blinding pain hit.

He didn't want to open them again.

He forced himself to, forced himself to look at the words on the page in front of him. He lasted through a couple of lines before he had to shut his eyes again.

Crap. He wasn't going to be able to hold out till Dean came back.

Then he heard Dean's voice crackle over his earphones. It was a moment before he realized that Dean wasn't talking to him.

* * *

"You son of a _bitch_," Dean growled. "What the hell is going on? _You've _been behind this all along? Have you been playing us?"

"Dean." Lou smiled, but there was something else behind it, and it didn't reach his eyes. "What are you talking about?"

"You know what the hell I'm talking about, douchebag." Dean stepped into the room, into Lou's space, forcing him to take several quick steps backwards. "Sam's sick. My little brother is _sick_. Did you have anything to do with it?" He pocketed the EMF meter and seized Lou by the front of his shirt. "_Did you? _Tell me the truth, because if you lie to me about my brother, I will know, and I promise I will make you regret it for the rest of your very short life."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

Dean shook him. Hard. "I'm giving you one last chance. What have you done to Sam?"

"_Dean!_ I haven't – nothing. I've done nothing to him, I swear."

"What's –" Dean stepped fully into the room and stopped short. It was cold in here – _frigid_. The carpet had been pulled back, and the floor underneath painted with a pentacle surrounded by rows of runes and lighted candles at the four corners. Dean didn't know what it meant, but he was willing to bet it wasn't just Astra's made-up crap. "What are you doing in here?"

"N-nothing, I –"

"Listen, you son of a bitch," Dean hissed, lifting Lou by the front of his shirt. Lou let out a squeak, which Dean ignored. "Sammy is _sick_, and right now it looks a _lot _like you're the reason. So if you don't want me to kill you painfully, tell me what the hell you think you're doing."

"Please – I'm not doing anything wrong. It's harmless."

"Who?"

"The ghost. I don't know, he – it – never gave me a name. But it's been here for weeks and it's never hurt me. Please. I haven't done anything to Sam."

"You expect me to believe that a _ghost _has been here for weeks and you didn't _tell us_?" Dean was struck by a sudden thought. "Did you tell Garth? Because if you did and he didn't tell me, I'm going to salt and burn his ass and then resurrect him so I can do it again."

"No – no, I didn't! I couldn't! I knew you wouldn't understand, hunters can't understand."

"Understand what? That ghosts need to be laid to rest?"

"Dean, please –"

"_Dean._"

Dean stopped short. He'd definitely heard his name twice, and he was pretty sure Lou had only said it once, so that left –

"Sammy?"

"Dean, please," Sam's voice rasped in his ear. "I can't fight it."

"I'm coming. Hang in there, Sammy. I'm on my way."

"Dean," Sam mumbled, consciousness obviously fading.

Dean dropped Lou and ran down the corridor, though something was telling him he was going to be too late.

* * *

Sam came to awareness slowly.

It took him a while to open his eyes. The world stayed pitch-black. He had a moment of panic, and then realization came.

The crypt. He was back in the crypt. The thing under his back this time was bumpy, so whatever had brought him here had probably dropped him on top of one of the marble cherubs.

Sam drew a deep breath. It was surprisingly musty. He knew it was an old vault that had been locked for well over a hundred and fifty years, but it smelt even mustier than it had last time. It smelt like death.

Sam shivered, and he thought he felt something move under him.

His brain wanted to panic again, but he forced it to calm down. This wasn't the time to go crazy. This was the time to remember that he'd been to this crypt twice, he knew how to get out, and now that his head was clear again – apparently that was one of the attractions of the crypt, it got rid of headaches and drowsiness – he could go back and find Dean.

He started to sit up.

He banged his head on something hard, falling back with a yelp. The thing under him shifted again with a sickening crack.

That was when Sam realized he wasn't lying on a carved cherub at all.

He was lying on a human skeleton.

_No._

He wasn't squeamish about bodies, he couldn't be with the lives they led, but that didn't mean he wanted to be lying on top of a skeleton in a –

He moved his hands out to the sides and encountered cold hardness.

A coffin.

He was in a coffin.

He was with a skeleton in its coffin.

Without thinking beyond the need to _get out get out get out _Sam put both hands on the hard thing – one of those stupid marble coffin lids above him – and pushed.

It didn't budge.

He tried again, putting his back into it, every last ounce of the muscle that Dean liked to tease him about. It had to work, God, it _had _to, he went through the whole freaking exercise routine and put up with Dean's cracks about his biceps and now his muscles _had _to get him out of here or what the hell use were they?

But when it came to Sam Winchester against centuries-old marble, marble won.

And the air was getting thin.

Sam choked back a terrified sob, letting his hands run down the surface above him looking for a weakness – a flaw – _anything _he could exploit.

There was a crack running breadthwise about halfway down. As soon as Sam felt it he knew where he was. He _was _on the same slab he'd been on earlier, but this time he was inside the coffin.

Marguerite's coffin.

The crack wasn't letting much air in, though. It _might_ give him a little more time, but not a lot. He had to find his way out. Or hope that Dean found him and managed to break him out before he suffocated.

"I warned you," a female voice said sadly.

Sam jerked in shock, hitting his head on the marble lid again. He gasped and slumped back.

"I warned you." The voice was coming from all around him. "I warned you not to sleep. They take you when you sleep. They put you down like a dog."

"Stop," Sam begged.

"No. Not like a dog. They are kind to dogs."

"Stop. _Please._"

Sam forced himself to keep tracing the coffin lid, up, up –

There was something. Something long and shallow scored into the marble. Sam traced it, found another mark next to it, and another next to that –

Sam couldn't hold back the sob.

Nail marks. That had to be it. Nail marks. From the same ghost that had left footprints burned into the stone floor. Nail marks from a ghost trying to claw its way out of a coffin just as its living self had been doing.

"He abandoned you." Marguerite didn't sound smug about it, only sad. "He left you to choke on your own final breaths. Alone."

* * *

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	17. Interlude 8

**Disclaimer: **Not mine.

Thanks to everyone who reviewed! :)

* * *

**Interlude: Lady of Mercy Hospital, Baltimore**

_The door shut behind Dean, who'd left after threatening dire consequences if he came back and found so much as a hair out of place on Sam. Fuller should have followed, but something made him stay in his chair._

_As soon as he'd gone, escorted to the Waiting Room by one of the nurses, Rob left, and came back with a man Fuller didn't know._

"_Sam," Rob said gently. "I believe you've met Lou West?"_

_Sam stared at the newcomer. "You… What are you doing here?"_

"_I'm here to help you, Sam." West looked sympathetic, but Fuller noted he didn't come within ten feet of Sam's bed. "I know how Dean treats you and it's wrong. I'm here to help."_

"_What are you talking about?" _

"_Dean hits you. He hurts you, Sammy –"_

"_Only Dean gets to call me that."_

"_He doesn't let anyone else call you Sammy?" Rob asked._

"_It's not like that!" Sam protested. "He's my brother. He calls me Sammy, and my father used to. That's it. I just – I don't like it if anyone else does."_

"_But he hurts you," West said. "Isn't that true?"_

"_NO!"_

"_How did you get hurt, Sam?"_

_For the first time, Sam looked uncertain. "I – I had an accident."_

"_What kind of accident?"_

"_I fell."_

"_Where?" Sam paled, obviously hoping desperately for a way out. Neither Fuller nor Rob offered him one. Getting victims to admit their abuse was the hardest step of all, and sometimes you had to push them into it. "Where did you fall?" West asked again._

"_Outside. Hiking."_

_Rob frowned. "Your brother said you took a tumble down the stairs."_

"_Oh, right." Fuller had to give points to Sam for a quick recovery. "The hiking fall was last week. Sorry, I'm still a bit loopy from the medication."_

"_You have these 'falls' often?" Rob asked._

"_I – I can get clumsy."_

"_Sam –"_

"_I want Dean."_

"_Tell us how you got hurt," West said. "Tell us the truth. Then we'll see about fetching your brother."_

"_I told you. I fell."_

"_I said, tell us the truth." West finally went close to the bed, leaning down, making Sam shrink back onto his pillows. "The truth, you little devil-spawn."_

"_Mr. West!" Rob protested._

"_I want Dean," Sam repeated._

"_Dean will get here when you get Satan's lies out of your mouth and learn to tell the truth." West's hand found Sam's shoulder, ignoring Rob's outraged protest and squeezing hard. "Tell the truth, demon!"_

_Sam flinched visibly._

_Fuller exchanged a glance with Rob and they acted as one, Fuller going to pull West away from Sam, and Rob hurrying out to tell one of the nurses to bring Dean back._

* * *

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	18. Be That Word Our Sign of Parting

**Disclaimer: **Not mine.

* * *

**Chapter IX: Be That Word Our Sign of Parting**

Dean ran up to his room, only stopping long enough to see that Sam wasn't there before grabbing the weapons duffel and hurtling down to the crypt.

His first horrified thought was that the crypt was empty. Where the hell was he supposed to look now? He hadn't even bothered to check what Sam had been reading, he'd been so certain that Sam would be in the crypt.

Then he heard a voice, a familiar female voice that was coming from everywhere and nowhere.

"He abandoned you. He abandoned you to die. I told you he would."

Marguerite was here. Dean couldn't see her, but he could hear her. She was here, and that meant Sam had to be nearby, because she didn't start the crazy-talk unless she saw him.

Dean waved his flashlight back and forth. The beam lit up headstones, carved angels and Latin inscriptions.

"Sam?" he yelled. He thought he heard something in answer, a muffled shout that might have been Sam saying his name. "Sammy!"

He shone the light all around, but he couldn't see Sam anywhere.

He kicked at the ground angrily. The toe of his boot caught at something. Dean directed his flashlight down and saw the burned-into-stone footprints he and Sam had found earlier.

Without thinking about it too much, he followed them backwards with the light, to where they ended at the marble slab where Sam _should _have been –

Where there was a long white marble casket now.

Heart in his throat, Dean ran the short distance and laid his hand on the smooth, pale surface. "Sam?"

There was another muffled noise.

"Crap," Dean hissed. Then he raised his voice. "Hold on, Sammy. I'm here now. I'm going to get you out. You just need to hold on for me."

* * *

Sam barely heard the shout through the marble that encased him, and although it was muffled he _knew _it was Dean. He could sense it the way he could always sense his brother's presence, and, like always, it soothed him. He was stuck with no way out, lying on top of the bones of a woman who'd suffocated to death in her own tomb, and it was getting harder to breathe with every passing second, but Dean was there.

"Too late," Marguerite's voice whispered in his ear. "Too late. He waited too long. He wanted to be too late to help you. You were never good enough."

"Please stop," Sam said, a lot calmer now that he knew Dean was just inches away. "Dean's here. I know what happened to you, and I'm sorry. But Dean's not like that. He's here."

Marguerite didn't stop. All of a sudden it was colder, it was _freezing_, and the inside of the coffin was lit by an unearthly white glow. There were eyes looking into his, huge, sad eyes.

Marguerite was floating in the air above him.

Sam yelped and backed away. That made the bones crack sickeningly and he jerked up, hitting his head on the marble again. He fell back, going lightheaded from the pain and lack of oxygen.

He heard Dean's voice again, and he tried to respond, but all he could manage was a strangled moan and a gasp for air.

"Insane," Marguerite crooned. "Insane, Sam. Why would he want you?"

* * *

The only thing keeping Dean from actually going insane was the knowledge that Sammy was trapped and counting on him. Sammy was trapped in a marble box that seemed to be airtight – and wasn't that a comforting thought, Sam's air might be running out while Dean stood here like an idiot – and Dean had to keep it together and get him out before he suffocated.

Just like Marguerite said.

Dean shuddered, wishing he'd thought to grab the non-weapons equipment duffel from their room. He could have used one of the shovels as a lever to try to get the damn thing open.

He pawed through the weapons until he found a machete. It wasn't perfect, but it would have to do.

He wedged the blade into the barely-perceptible gap on the top of the coffin, where the lid met the rim. He took a moment to position it and then pushed the handle down with all his strength.

The blade scraped out of position, making him drop the machete, and the lid hadn't budged a millimetre.

"_Crap_," Dean hissed, repositioning it for a second attempt.

* * *

Sam was keeping his breaths as shallow as he could to conserve the little oxygen he had left. He could hear thuds and scrapes that meant Dean was trying to get him out. All he had to do was hold on until Dean did.

"Too late," Marguerite sang. He had his eyes shut so he wouldn't have to see her floating just above him, but he couldn't shut out her voice. "Dying. Sam. Dying." A feather-light touch ghosted over his face, making him shiver. "Silly boy. I warned you. You cannot trust them. Never trust them. Never trust anyone." She laughed. "Why would he want the burden of an insane brother?"

"Please stop," Sam whispered. He knew it was a lie, deep down in his soul he knew Dean would never think of him as a burden. But Marguerite's insistence was wearing down his defences.

"Silly boy," Marguerite repeated, patting his cheek.

Suddenly, Sam was spiralling down into darkness.

"_Silly boy," Lucifer croons, his hand ice-cold on Sam's burning face. "You gave up everything for your brother and he's never going to forgive you. Did you think it was absolution?"_

"It would never have been enough," Marguerite told him. "You tried, but it would –"

" – _never be good enough for him, Sammy. He never wanted you. And now you're mine." _

_The Cage is closing in. Physically it's as big or as small as Lucifer wants it to be, the walls made of steel or cement or fire or iron bars depending on the fallen Angel's whim._

_Right now Lucifer's turned the walls into black granite polished to an unholy sheen. They're closing in. They're going to crush him. Sam's going to – _

"Die," Marguerite whispered. "It is best not to fight it. Die. Give up. How long will you fight?"

* * *

Dean flung the machete aside, not even caring that he threw it hard enough to put a serious chip in the blade. Freaking – useless – _thing_.

Sam was dying inches away, _counting _on Dean, and Dean was stuck with a bag of useless weapons and no way to save him. Dean was going to have to stand here and he wouldn't even _know _when his brother died.

No. That wasn't true. He would know. He'd feel Sam go out of the world, just as he'd done at Cold Oak, just as he'd done at Stull Cemetery. He'd feel Sam die, feel his own soul shrivel and fade right along with him, and then…

Dean put his hand on the casket that was trying to become Sam's tomb, letting himself sink to his knees. He pressed his forehead to the cool marble, wondering if Sam knew he was still there. Had Sam's little-brother faith withstood Marguerite's whispering? Did Sam still believe Dean would never abandon him?

Dean's fists clenched.

He was _going _to get Sam out of that damnable marble, and he was going to do it while Sam was still alive.

Dean reached into the duffel, thrusting aside knives and axes and going for the guns at the bottom. This was going to be risky, and he'd almost certainly wind up hurting Sam, but alive with a little collateral damage was better than dead.

"Sammy!" he yelled, hoping like hell Sam could hear him. "Shut your eyes and turn to your right."

* * *

Sam heard Dean yell something. He couldn't tell what, but it was comforting to know his big brother was there.

Then there was a loud bang somewhere near his feet.

Instinctively, Sam scrunched his eyes shut, pulled his legs up as far as the limited space would let him, and turned onto his side, away from the noise.

There was another bang, louder.

Sam's ears were still ringing when there was a third bang and a dangerous cracking sound.

* * *

As soon as he'd fired the third bullet, Dean knew there was going to be trouble. He'd been aiming for the bottom corner where the lid met the rim. The first two bullets blew out large chunks of marble but didn't go all the way through.

When the third one hit, he heard a vicious crack. The pressure had been enough to break the lid along the place where it had been cracked earlier.

Before Dean could do anything, before he could even shout a warning to Sam, the lid crumbled further, chips flying off. A couple of shards hit Dean, not hard enough for serious injury but hard enough to _hurt_. He ignored them, though, because right then the rest of the marble groaned and fell. Inside the coffin.

Dean heard a choked-off yell from Sam.

"_No!_" He dropped the gun, not even looking to see where it landed. Then he was pulling marble up and flinging it away with strength he hadn't even known he _had_.

Sam lay there, scrunched awkwardly, and there were splotches of red that Dean knew he should be worrying about. Right then, though, Sam opened his eyes and smiled up at Dean, and all Dean could feel was sweeping, glorious relief.

"You're bleeding," Sam murmured.

"I know. It's OK."

* * *

It took a while to get Sam out, because he was hurt more badly than he'd seemed at first. He'd taken a bad blow to the head – bad enough to make him squint and list against Dean when Dean sat him up – and Dean's searching fingers found a couple of cracked ribs and some deep cuts from the broken edges of marble.

Dean didn't try to move him right away. They stayed there for a couple of minutes, because Sam didn't seem able to do more than gulp in air and Dean, who didn't really feel like talking (he'd almost lost Sam, what the hell was there to talk about?), was content to support him while he did.

Neither of them was really surprised when Marguerite appeared.

"You came."

"Please _stop_," Sam said wearily, pushing himself even closer to Dean. Dean tightened the arm he had around Sam's shoulders, grounding him. "I'm sorry Robert was such a jerk, I really am. But you have to stop this. I promise you we'll deal with him."

Sam ended on a soft, pained sound, and Dean bent to soothe him. When he looked up again, Marguerite was watching them hungrily.

"What?" Dean asked.

"You came."

"He's my brother. Of course I came."

"You care for him," Marguerite said slowly.

Not being a girl, Dean didn't answer that question. He didn't see why he needed to. Would he be putting up with Sam snuggling, actually _snuggling _into him like a small animal, if he _didn't _care for the kid?

"Forgive me," Marguerite said. "I did not know. He told me… Robert told me it was a mistake. He wanted to prove it."

"I understand," Sam said, which was good, because Dean understood freaking _nothing_. "But… But, Marguerite, we have to stop him."

"I know."

"Don't interfere."

"He lied to me." Marguerite looked away and then back at them, her eyes blazing with something fierce and ugly. "Kill him."

Sam flinched, pushing himself so close that Dean could feel his brother's chest quivering with each ragged breath. He squeezed Sam's shoulder, which seemed relatively uninjured. Screw the ghost and screw this freaking _place_. Sam needed medical attention.

"_Kill me?_" another voice demanded incredulously.

Dean looked up, already knowing what he'd see. Sure enough, Underhill was standing in the doorway, glaring at Sam.

"Kill me?" he said again, gliding into the room, malevolent gaze not shifting from Dean's brother. "You would turn my own sister against me?"

"If I turned against you, it was no more than you deserved!" Marguerite snapped, not even looking at the new arrival. "You left me to die!"

"Marguerite –"

"You put me living in my tomb!"

"I did," Underhill said, finally turning away from Sam to look at her. "I did, and for that I _am _sorry. You cannot know how much it grieved me – how much it grieves me still! That you, you who were young and sweet and should have lived on in joy, died because of my negligence –"

"_Liar!_"

"But you had your vengeance, Marguerite," Underhill said, and he actually sounded a little sad now. "You drove me to my death. Was that not enough?"

"_I _did not kill you. That was Heaven's retribution for your crimes." Marguerite waved a hand towards Sam and Dean. "He came. Do you see? _He came! _You killed me a thousand times before I died!"

"Dean," Sam rasped. "I think we should get out of here."

"I think you're right." Dean bent to pick up the weapons duffel and put a shotgun loaded with rock salt in Sam's hand. "I'll do the navigating. You just focus on not falling over and you shoot anything that moves. Other than me."

* * *

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